Emergency Services (Regionalisation)

– in the House of Commons at 12:31 pm on 12 October 2005.

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Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) 12:42, 12 October 2005

I beg to move,

That this House
notes the overwhelming rejection of regional government in the referendum held in the North East in November 2004; regrets the ongoing transfer of powers to unelected regional quangos since the result, taking power away from democratically accountable local councils;
rejects the proposals for the regionalisation of the fire service and the imposition of distant Regional Fire Control Rooms;
expresses concern at the possibility of police forces being structured on a Government Office Region level, making the police less responsive to local people, and voices similar concerns over the restructuring of NHS ambulance trusts;
disagrees with the Deputy Prime Minister's proposals for the regionalisation of emergency services as being a desirable, legitimate or necessary tier of governance;
and demands that the Government dismantles the unwanted and unaccountable regional administration of emergency services.

The House may recall that, almost a year ago, on 4 November 2004, a referendum was held in the north-east on elected regional assemblies. The result was an emphatic no to regionalisation. Twelve months on, I am sure that colleagues are as surprised as me that the people of the north-east are still paying for a regional assembly, which 80 per cent. of them said that they did not want. Then again, everybody is paying for the roll-out of the Government's regional agenda. The difference is that in other parts of the country, people were not given the opportunity to reject assembles.

However, regional assemblies, the unelected and unaccountable quangos that have leeched power from local people, are merely the most obvious manifestation of a tide of regionalism, which is fundamentally changing the way that we are governed. The most recent and disturbing example is the regionalisation of emergency services.

The manner in which the regionalisation of emergency services was slipped out in the press during the summer recess shows just how sheepish the Government are about the announcement. I am sure that colleagues from all parties will, like me, have received many letters from people who are rightly concerned about the implications of the latest experiment in restructuring. From the signatures to early-day motion 229, it appears that at least 219 colleagues agree with those concerns.

It started with the regionalisation of fire control rooms. Now ambulance trusts and police forces are to be morphed into an unwieldy regional structure. Regionalism is such an abstract concept—even the word "regionalisation" smacks of bureaucracy and administrative jargon. The Government's concept of regions pays scant regard to the geography of our country and people's sense of identity. It fails the Simon Jenkins test—the Marbella test. When we bump into someone walking along the beach in, say, Marbella, and we ask them where they are from, it is hard to imagine someone from Banbury saying that they are from what the Government call "the south-east". Similarly, people in Scunthorpe would never say that they came from Yorkshire and the Humber. This just shows how artificial, contrived and arbitrary these Government-defined regions really are.

Photo of Tony Baldry Tony Baldry Conservative, Banbury

What people in Banbury will say is that this regionalisation has practical implications. The emergency fire control rooms have to be kept going until 2009. When I went to the control centre the other day and met the staff, they said that over the next four or five years they were going to go and find other jobs. How are these things going to work? That is what people in Banbury are concerned about, not this daft regional experiment. They want to know what is going to happen when they dial 999 over the next few years.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

No one is better placed than my hon. Friend to speak on behalf of the people of Banbury, and he entirely anticipates what I was about to say. Making an announcement such as this is bound to result in people looking for other jobs.

Photo of Tony Wright Tony Wright Labour, Cannock Chase

It is interesting that the hon. Lady mentioned the great Simon Jenkins just now. I should like to remind her that he wrote a book a few years ago which denounced the record of the previous Conservative Government for their ferocious centralisation and for what he called the "nationalisation of Britain". Is the hon. Lady recanting that part of her party's past along with everything else?

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might like to read one of Simon Jenkins's more recent publications, "Big Bang Localism", in which he roundly denounces the Government's plans for regionalisation. He is a fierce defender of the traditional structures of our country with which people truly identify.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I should like to make a little more progress.

The mechanics of regionalisation will sideline our counties and shires in favour of governmental units, which are not only culturally alien but undemocratic. In regard to emergency services, the measures will be hugely damaging. As no statement has been made to the House on these changes, I have had to rely on press reports. They seem to suggest that the number of fire control rooms is to be cut from 46 to nine, the number of ambulance trusts from 31 to 11, and the number of police forces from 43 to 23. There is not even any consistency across Whitehall on how to structure the regions. One of the lessons that we have all learned from New Orleans is that overlapping and confusing tiers of administration compromise our ability to respond in an emergency.

Photo of John Greenway John Greenway Conservative, Ryedale

My hon. Friend said that there had been no public statement on these matters. Worse than that, there has been precious little, if any, public consultation. The Government who gave us the stealth tax are now introducing the stealth axe. Many of our services are being cut without any consultation whatever. England's biggest county, North Yorkshire, which stretches the same distance as that between London and Bristol, is going to have fire service control rooms out of county, a police force that will probably be run from West Yorkshire, and Lord knows where the ambulance service will come from, but it will also be cut under these plans.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I could not have put it better myself, but he puts it well on behalf of the people he is elected to represent, and I am sure that they will appreciate his raising these concerns in the House on their behalf.

In practical terms, we learned only yesterday that huge tracts of the country from Banbury to Folkestone were to be served by only one fire control room, in Fareham. When people in Gloucester call the local fire brigade, they will be speaking to an operator in Taunton, and the regional fire control room for the whole of the north-west, stretching right up to the border with Scotland, will be in Warrington.

At Prime Minister's questions, we heard Charlotte Atkins—one of the Government's own—voicing her concern that one ambulance trust for the whole of the west midlands region would be unlikely to deliver a better service. Such views have been echoed by the chief executive of the Staffordshire ambulance trust, Roger Thayne, who said that there was

"no evidence that larger ambulance services are anything than more expensive and do not improve performance and save more lives . . . Services serving a population of more than 2 million cost more and save less lives."

The Government would do well to listen to one of their Members and to front-line practitioners in those services.

Photo of Mark Harper Mark Harper Conservative, Forest of Dean

In reference to the fire control centre in Quedgeley, Gloucester, my hon. Friend might be interested to know that there is not

"a better example . . . in the south-west than what we have managed to achieve in our tri-service centre."—[Hansard, 15 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 90.]

Those are not my words but those of Mr. Dhanda, who sits on the Labour Benches, in 2004. My hon. Friend is perceptive in picking up that many Labour Members are concerned about such moves locally, but no doubt they will sit silently, as the hon. Member for Gloucester will, as their Government steamroller through these plans.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. The fact is that the Gloucester fire control room will be lost. Perhaps one fruit of today might be that the Government listen to concerns from both sides of the House, including from their Back Benchers.

It is amazing how many euphemisms there are for the word "cuts"— restructuring, rationalising, and dare I say, regionalising, all spring to mind. Were the roles reversed, and were we announcing cuts on such a scale, the shrieks from the Labour Benches would be enough to shatter the new glass screen. Local emergency services will be mothballed and local knowledge and expertise will be lost.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

The Minister is, like me, a former fireman, and he knows that local knowledge of topography saves lives. Ultimately, I do not think that he believes in the regionalisation but has been told what to do by the Deputy Prime Minister. I believe passionately that firemen want to save lives, like I did. The Minister does not believe that what is going on is right—it will cost lives and he knows that it has done.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

My hon. Friend makes a point about those who operate within the service and who put their lives on the line. I hope that he will speak in this debate and give us the benefit of his inside knowledge. I also hope that there is a chink in the Government's armour with a Minister susceptible to such important arguments.

I know that advances in technology can change the way that services are delivered, but anyone who has a car equipped with satellite navigation will know that it is far from infallible and that a little local knowledge counts for a lot. Common sense tells us that when it comes to providing emergency services, local knowledge is a precious commodity—speed of response is everything, and that can so easily be compromised by such practical issues as time lost through not being able to place an address or even a misunderstanding arising from an operator who is unfamiliar with the accent of someone in distress.

It is an issue not just of proximity, however, but of priority. Within a region, which area will get first call on where resources are targeted? It is nearly always the urban areas at the expense of the rural areas.

Photo of Damian Green Damian Green Conservative, Ashford

Before my hon. Friend moves off the point about local knowledge, which my hon. Friend Mike Penning has put eloquently in the case of the fire service, I want to draw to her attention the case of the police service. Recent surveys by Kent police have shown that the single biggest complaint of my constituents and others in Kent was that they were dialling 999 and getting people who clearly had no knowledge of the area in which they lived. That significantly reduced confidence in the police. If we get regional call centres, in which people will not even have heard of the town in which the emergency is taking place, public confidence in our police will be reduced. Along with the many other reasons that she has advanced, that ought to give the Government pause and get them to reverse this wretched policy.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I agree totally with my hon. Friend, and he will have heard from the support for his intervention that the experience of most of us is that the regionalisation of call centres for our police services is simply not working. It is unpopular with those of us who want to use the service and generally increases anxiety when a critical 999 call is being made. It is not working well.

In my constituency, police resources have been diverted into Birmingham, which has left outlying areas very exposed. When I asked my local chief constable why response times were so long in my constituency, he replied, "It's simple, Mrs. Spelman, as a police force we have 98 hot spots to focus on and none of those is in your constituency." With people forking out for way above inflation increases in council tax, they are entitled to ask why the Government can no longer afford to maintain local services.

That issue of resource allocation is part and parcel of accountability. Once the regional framework for such services has been established, they will no longer be answerable to the communities that they serve. By determining targets and priorities at a regional level, accountability is being eroded, and in the long term that can only make life more difficult for front-line staff. Historically, the strength of our emergency services has been partly derived from the support of the society that they serve, but by adopting a regional structure that crucial relationship is broken. How can a single body serving a region of up to 8 million people possibly be more responsive than a locally-based, locally-accountable service?

Over and above the advantages that we know we will lose by moving to a regional structure, what about all the risks that go with such a radical upheaval? I am not a natural pessimist, but the track record of this Government on delivering grand IT projects is not great. The tax credits and the Passport Agency fiasco bear witness to how badly things can go wrong, and the consequences of such a breakdown when it comes to providing rescue services is unimaginable. Obviously, the worst case scenario is loss of life arising from an IT breakdown, but even risks such as project over-run in terms of both time and budget will end up impacting on council tax bills. Yet again people will be forced to dip into their pockets and pay for the costs of regionalisation, which they never even wanted—costs that some estimate could run as high as £988 million for the restructuring of fire services alone.

What is the driver behind this headlong rush into regionalisation? Certainly, it is not that local people want it. As a project, it seems fraught with risks that are simply not outweighed by the benefits. I am no military tactician, but it would seem elementary that in the current climate of heightened security, consolidating multiple emergency services into just one location makes the overall structure even more vulnerable to attack. If a regional centre is knocked out, I presume that the fallback would be another regional centre even further away. That smacks of putting all our eggs in one basket.

No one is going to be fooled by the packaging of these proposals. People can see that reorganisation is a cost-cutting exercise, not least because of the 1,300 or so jobs that will be lost in local fire control rooms. Although these changes will not be complete until 2009, as Tony Baldry pointed out, the reality is that jobs will start leaching away from now, undermining the quality of the service in the interim. That will happen with all emergency services as regionalisation gathers pace. Attractive headlines such as "A New Era for NHS Ambulance Services", cannot mask the inevitable decline that will follow. Certainly, that will not satisfy an efficient ambulance trust such as Warwickshire, which makes half the number of patient journeys as London with just one tenth of the funding. Ambulance trust managers suspect that it is much more about the Government delivering their manifesto pledge to provide £250 million worth of savings in NHS administration. Surely it is the Chancellor who should be subject to efficiency savings and performance delivery targets rather than our front-line emergency services.

In whose interest is regionalisation really taking place? The ambulance service review said that trusts needed to be

"of a size to provide better financial, operational and resource management."

But there is no mention of the patients. Everyone knows that rural ambulances have to carry more kit because of the greater distances over which they have to travel, but will that get overlooked under regional procurement? I am not even convinced that regionalisation delivers cost benefits. It is rare for reorganisation to save money. It is not that we believe that no scope exists for amalgamating services; scope does exist, if doing so is practical and people want it. That is why we have set out an alternative "clustering" of local authorities, as and when they see fit. Such an arrangement will be more responsive to local demands and will better reflect considerations such as population, geography and infrastructure. It is a far more practical solution than a one-size-fits-all jacket of regionalisation. Above all, it ensures proper accountability.

Photo of Andrew Turner Andrew Turner Shadow Minister (Cabinet Office)

May I provide some evidence to support my hon. Friend's assertion? Only last night, the now Conservative-controlled Isle of Wight council agreed to co-operate with Conservative-controlled Hampshire council on the provision of fire services. They did not need to amalgamate to provide an improved service.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

My hon. Friend Mr. Turner demonstrates the benefit of an entirely voluntary, clustered approach in which both parties see the benefit of the merger.

People at the front line know where and when to coalesce far better than a bureaucrat in Whitehall, so why do the Government not trust them and give them that freedom? This Government will not embrace clustering because to do so is to grant local authorities and service providers a degree of autonomy: in other words, it is decentralisation. No matter how hard the Government try to speak the language of localism, they still behave as if central Government know best. That is why regionalisation, in whatever form, is not a way of delivering localism; it is just a way of enforcing centralism. The evidence is there. The Government have created a plethora of unelected regional bodies in what amounts to a "quangocracy". The A to Z of this quangocracy covers art, biodiversity, climate change, fire, housing, industry, public health, rural affairs, social inclusion, tobacco, transport and waste.

Local people are finding that decisions directly affecting their lives are being taken by regional assemblies that they cannot hold to account. Who are these assemblies answerable to? They are answerable to nobody—except the Deputy Prime Minister. If that is localism, the mind boggles as to what form a dictatorship would take. If people are paying for them, do they not have a right to know what these unelected regional bodies are up to? Why are the regional assemblies exempt from the Freedom of Information Act 2000? The Lord Chancellor still has not replied to that question, which I put to him a week ago, so perhaps the Minister could do so when he responds.

Something tells me that that the Government are all too aware of the folly of this regionalisation programme. There are few—except the Deputy Prime Minister himself—who would rush to defend it, but in fact regionalisation has gone beyond being his personal plaything: it has become a proxy for sweeping cuts to our public services. Taxpayers have a right to know what has happened to their money. Has a risk assessment or a cost-benefit analysis of regionalisation been carried out? [Interruption.] The Minister says yes, so perhaps he we would like to publish it and make it available to Members.

When local police stations, fire control rooms and ambulance trusts are boarded up and the land used for the Deputy Prime Minister's so-called £60,000 houses, people will see how he and the Chancellor have conspired to scrap their local emergency services, and they will not thank them for it. There is no demand for regionalisation; the quality of our services will suffer and it comes at a high price. Surely now is the time to abort this disastrous regionalisation programme and to accede to the wishes of the electorate. The Deputy Prime Minister is playing politics with people's lives, putting his empire building before the public interest. The rest of us in politics understand that the public interest must come first.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London) 1:05, 12 October 2005

I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to end and add:

"supports local, regional and national collaboration to improve public safety and health;
welcomes the continuing reduction in fire deaths which Fire and Rescue Authorities have achieved in partnership with the Government and other stakeholders;
welcomes the positive role played by local authorities in Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships and the fall in crime as a result;
welcomes the public consultation under way to ensure police force structures protect the public from terrorism and organised crime, while continuing to provide responsive neighbourhood policing that meets the needs of local communities;
welcomes the proposed managerial changes in ambulance trusts which will cut overheads and bureaucracy, while boosting investment in front-line staff and services for patients;
and congratulates the Government on increasing expenditure on all the emergency services since its election in 1997.".

I speak on behalf of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as the Minister responsible for the fire and rescue service—one of the emergency services whose future has, we have just been told, prompted today's debate. Anyone reading the Opposition motion would be led to believe that our emergency services are either in difficulty or about to be so. With respect, that argument does not stand up to inspection.

I shall try to respond to the concerns expressed by Mrs. Spelman by outlining exactly how much progress has been made in recent years, especially in the fire and rescue services. The Government's role in trying to deliver this progress has been clear. On the back of the 2002–03 fire dispute, we had the Bain inquiry—an independent review that recommended what Professor Bain called "supra-brigade co-ordination". He argued that local fire services could improve their effectiveness in saving lives by working together at regional level in key areas such as command and control. The June 2003 White Paper and the subsequent national framework documents set the strategic direction for the 21st century fire and rescue service—one in which prevention has joined emergency response as a core function.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

Although the Bain review recommended co-operation, it also specifically ruled out the merging of services.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

The hon. Lady makes a fair point; I was simply trying to explain that the Bain inquiry pointed in a particular direction. We are not trying to force amalgamations or mergers, but we do support co-operation and collaboration between county brigades where appropriate. As Mr. Turner mentioned earlier, such a decision was taken by the Isle of Wight and Hampshire fire authorities. We have discussed it and we know that it is a sensible move forward, and I will further discuss Professor Bain's recommendations in due course.

Photo of David Drew David Drew Labour, Stroud

As my hon. Friend knows and as has been mentioned, we have the tri-service centre in Quedgeley, in Gloucester, which has been subjected to an initial evaluation. Will he now agree to a full evaluation, and will he talk to the various parts of that service—not just the management, but the workers—to see whether that model has some merit and could be applied in other parts of the country?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He has written to me about this issue and we have discussed it, and I will in due course explain in detail why we are not convinced that that model is the best one for 21st century fire brigades, and why the proposal on which we will deliver is the best way forward for England's fire and rescue services.

The fire and rescue national framework sets out the Government's priorities and objectives for the fire and rescue service. What both the authorities and the Government need to do is to achieve them. The framework provides clear direction from central Government, while ensuring that locally, authorities are free to continue to make their own strategic decisions about fire cover.

We have set overall public service agreement targets. By 2010, we want to cut accidental fire deaths in the home by 20 per cent. and deliberate fires by 10 per cent.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

You say that local authorities can choose whether to amalgamate. Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire fire authorities have chosen to do so and that is good practice, but such choice does not apply to fire control centres. They have no choice—you are imposing regional control centres on them.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

If Mike Penning can be patient, I shall discuss the specific arrangements and our proposals for fire controls in greater detail later.

As I was saying a few moments ago, we have set firm public service agreement targets to cut accidental deaths, injuries and fires in the home—targets that were attacked by some and criticised by many who said that the 20 per cent. cut in deaths was not ambitious enough and that we should have zero tolerance of fire deaths. However, it is our belief that setting this target is achievable, practicable and provides a good way forward for the immediate future.

Photo of Eric Pickles Eric Pickles Shadow Minister (Communities and Local Government), Deputy Chair, Conservative Party

The Minister's ideas and targets for reducing deaths are laudable. To a degree, fire deaths are at a plateau in respect of the next series to be reduced, but surely the most logical approach is to tackle the problem of houses in multiple occupation. In particular, we should be thinking about using sprinkler schemes. The Minister is going to spend considerable amounts of money on reorganisation, but would it not be better spent on sprinklers and tackling the problem of houses in multiple occupation?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

The hon. Gentleman demonstrates his familiarity with his subject. There is no disagreement between us that sprinkler systems are an effective way of protecting people, particularly the most vulnerable. I commend to him this morning's Westminster Hall debate with Paul Rowen on the very subject of smoke detectors. What I said there demonstrates exactly what the Government are trying to achieve through the development of domestic sprinkler systems, which we believe will protect the most vulnerable in our communities. I do not disagree with the idea of moving in that direction, but I am also saying that any savings made from the new regional control centres will be available for fire and rescue services to deploy for the better protection of their local communities. I shall say more about that in due course.

Photo of Richard Younger-Ross Richard Younger-Ross Liberal Democrat, Teignbridge

The former Minister, Mr. Raynsford, who now sits on the Back Benches, was clear in Committee that the Government were looking towards taking action on sprinkler systems and that new legislation would be introduced in the form of building regulations. Can the Minister tell us when that is likely to happen?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

The building regulations document is out for consultation at the moment and we expect the outcome of that consultation to be known shortly. I shall endeavour to supply the hon. Gentleman with the exact date in due course.

The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 put prevention at the heart of the Government's agenda for improving the fire and rescue service and created a new duty to promote fire safety. The Government are also reforming general fire safety legislation, ensuring that the responsibility for safety in non-domestic premises will rest with the person responsible for those premises. From 1 April next year, the Regulatory Reform Order 2001 will simplify the law, remove a bureaucratic regime of fire certification, and replace it with a modern risk assessment approach.

We are investing substantially in the service, including in new personal protective equipment for firefighters' own safety and new training facilities and opportunities. In particular, the training facilities for urban search and rescue at the Fire Service college are now regarded as the best in the world. Grant support is also targeted for local action to reduce arson and other fire risks. Under the home fire risk check programme, for example, we are funding to the total of £25 million a programme of visits to the 1,250,000 houses that are judged to be most at risk from fire to offer advice and practical help such as the free installation of smoke alarms. In the first six months of this year alone, 87,000 such visits took place and 91,000 new smoke alarms were fitted. I have already mentioned this morning's Westminster Hall debate on the subject, sponsored by the hon. Member for Rochdale.

In 2005–06, fire and rescue authorities received an average 3.7 per cent. grant increase and no authority received less than 2.5 per cent. In addition to that investment in fire prevention and mainstream emergency response, the Government are investing heavily in a new resilience framework—approaching £1 billion to create a national network of regional fire control centres, called FiReControl—a new radio system called Firelink and a new dimensions programme, which has seen us commit £180 million for mass decontamination, urban search and rescue, and high-volume pumping equipment to improve the capability of the fire and rescue service to respond to major disasters, including terrorist incidents.

Photo of David Taylor David Taylor Labour, North West Leicestershire

The Minister knows from our discussion yesterday that I was lobbied by the fire control staffs of the five component counties of the east midlands, which will see their centres closed and relocated to the northern part of north-west Leicestershire. If he is so convinced of the strength of his case on regional centres, will he now announce that there will be an independent assessment of the business case that underpins a very expensive and quite risky project?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

My hon. Friend raised that matter with me yesterday and he will recall that I suggested that if he listened to my full explanation, he might be persuaded that a full independent assessment was unnecessary. The Government certainly do not believe that such an assessment is needed. We believe that all the protocols of assessment within the Government have been observed and that the business case, as well as the professional and organisational case, clearly stand up to scrutiny.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I have already spent 10 minutes, but I am only a third of the way through my speech. I will give way later, but we have only limited time and many colleagues wish to participate in the debate. If he insists, however, I will give way.

Photo of Richard Benyon Richard Benyon Conservative, Newbury

I am grateful. Will the Minister respond to the point made by my hon. Friend Mrs. Spelman about the Government's lamentable performance on new information technology projects, which are absolutely key to success?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

Yes, I shall deal with the issue later in my speech, but to anticipate, nothing that we are going to deploy in the new regional control centres has to be invented. Everything is already in existence and already deployed in fire control centres in different parts of the country. The problem is that only a minority of fire services have and enjoy the benefits, which we are going to roll out to all 46 English fire brigades so that the latest technology will be available to all.

I have said many times before that existing control staff do a good job, but that does not mean that we have a control system suited to the demands of the 21st century. To respond more fully to Mr. Benyon, with FiReControl, we will enhance the role of control staff with the latest technology, which has a proven track record with emergency services across the country. The new national network will make it possible to respond effectively to all incidents, however big, whether natural disasters or terrorist attack, and allow the service to deal with surges in demand that can currently overwhelm local resources. Should one centre be out of action because of loss of power or telecommunications, it will allow immediate fallback arrangements. It will underpin dynamic mobilising of appliances to help cut incident response times, resulting in saving lives and reducing property damage, as well as allowing data transfer from control rooms to the cab or fire appliances on the way to incidents.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

The gold command structure has worked effectively from 7 July and the Firelink radio communication system will have interoperability, which is part of the modernisation process in communications.

In carrying all that out, we estimate savings of more than £20 million a year and a 30 per cent. reduction in annual running costs, with the money saved to be reinvested in the service. There is an overwhelming case on resilience and efficiency grounds for FiReControl, which will help deliver individual fire and rescue authorities' integrated risk management plans and be fully accountable to those authorities.

All that makes the Opposition motion particularly baffling, as we have freed the fire and rescue services from centralised state control. We have repealed section 19 of the Fire Services Act 1947, which meant that almost any change in local operational delivery required ministerial approval, and removed the outdated national standards for fire cover that forced local professional chief fire officers into a Whitehall-imposed straitjacket. We have thus moved the emphasis of protection for the fire and rescue service from buildings to people, and put the service under local control.

Photo of Tony Baldry Tony Baldry Conservative, Banbury

The Oxfordshire fire service does not want a regional fire and control centre. The Minister has talked a lot about resilience, but how will he protect the integrity of control centres between now and 2009? There are 22 jobs at Kidlington. Those people owe their families a duty of care, and they will drift away and find employment elsewhere. How will he ensure that the Oxfordshire fire and control centre will still operate between now and 2009?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which is being addressed by local fire authorities, chief fire officers and human resources managers. My Department is also looking at its ability to assist in the transfer arrangements between now and 2009. We know that the majority of posts will be maintained, and we are confident that most control room staff will want to avail themselves of the new opportunities for better career paths in the new control rooms. There will be better facilities, and greater demands will be placed on the professionalism of staff, many of whom are under-utilised at present. However, not everyone will adopt the same approach, and it is clear that management will have to deal with that.

I was saying that I hoped that all hon. Members would welcome the integrated risk management plans, which respond to many of the needs of our constituents and communities. As has been noted in the past few minutes, people do not want to be told by Whitehall what to do and how to deploy resources. Throughout, we have sought to work with the elected members of fire and rescue authorities to modernise and improve the service so that we can achieve our common goal of saving lives, reducing injuries and preventing fires.

Photo of Jeremy Wright Jeremy Wright Conservative, Rugby and Kenilworth

My question may be hypothetical, but it is all too possible. A person who reports a fire in my area might not know the locality and so may not be able to describe the address. An operator in a regional fire control centre is far less likely to be able to fill in the gaps in that report than would be the case with a local fire control operator. Therefore, would not a regional fire control centre be less likely to save lives than a local one?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I shall draw two analogies for the hon. Gentleman. First, London has a single control centre that covers several hundred square miles, and a population of 7 million people who speak 300 languages. However, that centre's staff are among the most efficient in the country. By contrast, the Strathclyde centre deals with most of the west coast of Scotland, which includes both rural and metropolitan communities. The latest technology and the professionalism of our control staff mean that reports are being dealt with more efficiently than ever before. I strongly advise the hon. Gentleman to look at the modern control rooms that a minority of this country's fire brigades have. I accept that not every brigade has a modern control room, but we want to make the technology available to everyone. His question is a fair one, but the problem will be resolved by the use of modern technology.

Naturally, there is a regional dimension to this matter. The Government offices for the regions exist because, more than a decade ago, the Conservative Government of the time decided that it made sound organisational sense for different Departments to operate within the same geographical boundaries. The same logic—

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

The Government offices for the regions were set up originally to act as a one-stop-shop interface between Whitehall Departments, especially for people a long way from London. They were never conceived as an accountable body to which emergency services should be responsible. Does the Minister accept that the Government's policy of establishing elected regional assemblies has failed, and that the proposed regionalisation of the emergency services is not democratically accountable?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

The world has moved on, and indirectly elected regional assemblies now exist. In the fire service, for example, there are regional resilience forums, through which the fire and rescue service can co-ordinate with other organisations how best to respond to natural disasters and emergencies. The London resilience forum has been working since September 2001. I respectfully suggest to the hon. Lady that its existence was what helped London respond so effectively to the bombings in July. It served as a clearing house for all the major organisations in business, emergency services, the voluntary sector and local authorities. It allowed those bodies to plan for such an incident, and we all know how well London responded when the time came. We need to establish the same structures at regional level in all parts of England, to ensure that the country is protected. That is a question not of ideology, but of basic common sense.

I turn now to the restructuring of the police force. At present there are 43 police forces in England and Wales, and for some time people have questioned whether that is the right structure. Police forces need to be able to tackle crime at all levels. They need to be able to deliver neighbourhood policing, and have the capacity and ability to meet the threats posed by terrorism, domestic extremism, serious organised crime and civil emergencies.

Concern has been expressed—not least within the police service itself—that the existing force structure is not fit to undertake both those critical roles. For that reason, in June 2004 my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary commissioned Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary to examine whether the service was sufficiently robust to handle the whole spectrum of its responsibilities. The HMIC's findings were published last month in a report entitled "Closing the Gap". It concluded that the existing structure was no longer fit for its purpose and that, below a certain size, there is not a sufficient critical mass to provide the necessary sustainable level of protective services that the 21st century increasingly demands.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I am sorry, but I must make progress. The inspectorate looked at a number of options for restructuring the police service. It concluded that the creation of strategic forces offered the best solution, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary agreed. He has made it clear that he has no blueprint for restructuring, and that the process should be led by the police. He has therefore invited chief constables and police authorities to submit proposals for restructuring by 23 December.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I will in a moment. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is confident that the proposals for strategic forces will improve our capacity to tackle the most serious crimes, and therefore strengthen local policing. The bedrock for the delivery of neighbourhood policing is the basic command unit. That will not change. Local policing will continue to be delivered from local police stations, by locally based police officers, special constables and community support responding to locally determined policies.

In fact, far from putting local policing at risk, the creation of strategic forces will help safeguard neighbourhood policing. If a police force has the capacity and resilience to staff major crime teams or respond to public order incidents, it will not need to call on neighbourhood policing teams. If such capacity is not in place, local policing will suffer from abstractions to meet other demands. As I have said, police authorities and chief constables have been asked to submit firm proposals for restructuring by Christmas, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will report to the House on those submissions in the new year.

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire

The Minister is very generous in giving way. If his thesis is that big, by definition, is beautiful, will he explain why the City of London police force is being left alone? That force has national strength in the prevention of white-collar fraud, but it is the smallest force in England. Why is it not to be touched?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is making progress on the basis of the HMIC report, and further information will be available in due course. However, it is to the HMIC that he will listen and the hon. Gentleman will be able to continue this dialogue when the various police authorities have made their submissions and my right hon. Friend has presented his report to the House in the new year.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I turn now to the ambulance service. A full 12-week public consultation led by the strategic health authorities will be held on the future organisation of ambulance trusts. The Department of Health will propose that there should be 11 such trusts, but no final decision will be taken until local interests, patients and the public have been properly consulted. The proposed change is part of a wider review of ambulance services that sets out a compelling vision for the future. It will provide an extended range of service, take health care to the patient and offer fast, effective and convenient care at the first point of contact.

Photo of Tony Wright Tony Wright Labour, Cannock Chase

My hon. Friend made a powerful case about the fire control centres, but he has a less powerful case in relation to some other services. In Staffordshire, we have a high-performing police force. I have an outstandingly successful local primary care trust and the Staffordshire ambulance service is the best performing ambulance service in the country with the best response times. Our approach to public services used to be based around the slogan, "What matters is what works." That was sensible. What is not sensible is to exchange that for a slogan of, "If it's working well, abolish it."

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point in defence of the Staffordshire ambulance trust, and I am sure note will be taken of his comments in the consultation, which is under way. We are not trying to replace what works best. We are trying to make sure that what works best works across the country.

Photo of Andrew Lansley Andrew Lansley Shadow Secretary of State for Health

In relation to the police service, the Minister has just said that he is going to have a police service-led review. In relation to the ambulance service, he has been told by the Department of Health that the Department will propose 11 trusts. Why cannot he accept that the review led by Peter Bradley did not point towards 11 trusts but to maybe 20-plus? Also, if the review were ambulance service-led, there would be a different solution. Why will he not have open consultation on the basis of an ambulance service-led solution?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman; the consultation is open. I have indicated that, at the conclusion of the submissions, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will report to the House in due course. Clearly that will provide opportunities to colleagues to make their feelings known.

It is our belief that ambulance trusts need to be of a size that enables appropriate investment in people and resources to underpin current and future services. These proposals will ensure that resources are targeted where they are most needed in improving patient care and supporting the front line. It is not about reducing frontline service provision. Local innovations and successes will not only be preserved, but will be shared to the benefit of all patients.

We have an opportunity to lift the quality of the lowest and to set a new high benchmark where world-class services are provided for patients wherever they live. Nor is it about one trust taking over another; it is about new trusts that provide efficient and effective locally responsive ambulance trusts that meet patient needs. We believe that these proposals will put the NHS in the best position to provide convenient, consistently high-quality and appropriately mobile health care for the people of England. I am sure that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend Ms Winterton will be saying more about this in due course.

Photo of Mark Francois Mark Francois Shadow Paymaster General

I thank the Minister for his courtesy in giving way. May I take him back to policing? The Government seem convinced that big is beautiful. They are trying to press chief constables to have fewer and fewer divisions and are now threatening to get rid of well established county forces such as Essex. How will having fewer and fewer divisions and getting rid of the Essex police force make that force more accountable to the local people whom they are supposed to serve?

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I remind the hon. Gentleman that one of the big successes in recent years, certainly in London, has been neighbourhood policing; dedicated teams in the locality that are connecting with local people and local representatives, whether these are democratically elected or community groups. As I said, the measure will give capacity to allow forces to deal with the big incidents and challenges of the 21st century, while being able to be responsive to local needs and to deal with local problems, which is what people want most. That is a success story that we are rolling out across the country.

Finally, over the summer recess, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of fire and rescue services across the country. These visits have given me the opportunity to see at first hand the excellent work going on locally, especially new work on community safety, including youth intervention schemes and the growing use of co-responder schemes in which, again, the emergency services work together.

Fire and rescue authorities have in general responded well to the challenge presented by their new responsibilities. The combination of national strategy and investment with local delivery led by elected fire and rescue authority members is working. Nowhere is this clearer than in the voluntary regional management boards, where Conservative and Liberal Democrat members work alongside their Labour colleagues to provide the best service for their communities. They know how important it is to support the fire and rescue service, and the improvements can be clearly seen on the ground.

Our approach—I am sorry to disappoint Mike Penning, but I do firmly believe in our approach—has the full backing of the Chief Fire Officers Association, who lead a practitioners' forum that gives us expert professional advice, the Local Government Association, who are key partners in modernisation, and the stakeholders represented in our business and community safety forum.

I pay tribute to our whole-time, day crewing and retained firefighters as well as to other fire service staff who serve our communities well. We know that, regardless of debates about geographic boundaries and management structures, the Fire and Rescue Service will continue to work with local people, elected representatives from all parties and other emergency services to give the public the protection and the help they expect and deserve.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) 1:36, 12 October 2005

We should begin by scotching the first myth of this debate: that Labour started the process of quangocratisation. [Interruption.] It is a long word, is it not? It is a good way to start. In 1994, the Conservatives invented a system whereby the Home Office appointed independent members to police authorities, thereby separating the relationship with county councils and, in effect, quangocratising it.

Let us not pretend that the Conservatives oppose regional quangos. In London, they abolished elected regional government and replaced it with a host of regional quangos, such as the London planning advisory committee, the London research centre and the London ecology unit. They did not oppose that then and they do not oppose it now. They are going through a phase of claiming to champion local government—probably because they have lost faith in their ability to get into government nationally.

In office, the Conservatives were responsible for some of the worst crimes of centralised tyranny and affronts to local democracy—for example, universal and arbitrary rate capping and the nationalisation of business rates. Despite their high moral tone today—it sticks in my throat even more than my October cold, which, forgive me, has made me cough throughout the debate so far—there is little substantive detail in their policies on localising power.

The Conservatives' polices to abolish quangos leave a lot to be desired. Before the election they promised to abolish 168 quangos—a swathe of quangos, particularly in the Department of Health, that the Government were already abolishing. Another group of quangos on the list had not met for 15 or 20 years. Of the others, the majority had been proposed for privatisation or renationalisation. I do not call that an expansion of local democracy. The only quangos whose powers would be returned to local government were regional assemblies, regional observatories and regional housing boards.

If the Conservatives want to defend local accountability, why on earth are they so opposed to regions? The main reasons are some kind of strange conspiracy theory about Europe, concern about the committee of regions and a perceived threat to county councils, when instead they should be making proposals to devolve power from central Government.

Let us have a look at Labour. Regions were already a fait accompli when it came to power because the Conservatives had developed the regional offices. Labour, however, did have a good idea that we supported, although we disagreed on some of the details, which was to make regional government accountable. We supported the proposals to establish elected regional assemblies across the country because they would deal with the democratic deficit of regional government, which at present is unaccountable. We did not think that the proposed devolution went far enough and we disagreed with the compulsory link with local government reorganisation. That is history: the question now is how we move beyond the north-east referendum.

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire

Does the hon. Lady agree that more important than what the Liberal Democrats think is what the people think? In the north-east of England, 78 per cent. of the people said that they hated the idea of elected regional assemblies. Does she want to go against the will of the people?

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

That is precisely the point. The people in the north-east rejected the proposals, yet, regardless of their views, Labour is ploughing ahead with the regional agenda. Our view is that governance without accountability would be a massive step backwards.

Perhaps Labour has achieved what it wanted all along, because the regional quangos are still in place. Unelected bodies with a membership largely appointed by ministerial fiat tend to do what they are told. If they do not, they can be overruled with impunity. However, if the Labour Government were true to the democratic traditions of this country, they would seek to reform those bodies to make them more accountable, not less accountable, and more in touch with their local communities, not less. Instead, vital services will become even more remote from the people they serve.

What of the pragmatic details of regionalising emergency services? Hon. Members would expect me not to subscribe to the view that big is beautiful, but the existing 43 police authorities vary considerably in size and capacity. I accept the scope for reviewing relationships across forces, but why will the process be so top-down? The Minister suggested that it would be led by police from the bottom up, but will he give us an assurance today that if police authorities oppose the proposals to merge, they will be allowed to retain the forces that they believe to be best for local people? Perhaps that question could be answered in the wind-up. At a time when everybody says that they want more community policing, the priority should be to make the police more local, not more distant.

Photo of David Howarth David Howarth Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and the Minister failed to respond to hon. Members who made similar points earlier. If a police force is organised to be more efficient for a small number of rare but serious crimes, police authorities will focus on those crimes to the detriment of local community policing. I do not see how that can fit with the Department's emphasis on communities and neighbourhoods.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point about the danger of skewing police operations towards rare incidents. I understand that responding to such incidents eats up the resources of small forces, but there must be other ways of addressing that problem. For example, we could have a national resources unit, with senior officers and experts who could provide back-up in complex cases. That would be better than proposing to run rural policing in Cornwall from Exeter or, even worse, Bristol, which would feel a long way from people who live in rural Cornwall.

The Government have proposed much structural reform but have failed to account for the existing fundamental flaw in police authority structures—that they are tax-raising bodies but are not elected. Police authorities have put up their council tax precepts by 150 per cent. since 1997—double the figure for councils—but there has been no outcry. It is the councils who bill people, collect the money and take the blame. No one begrudges the police the extra money that we know they need, but what happened to the principle of no taxation without representation? The Government should consider ways of making the police more accountable. The Liberal Democrats are consulting on our policies following the result of the north-east referendum, and we will look for ways of making police and other services more democratically accountable.

One of the options—of many—that my colleagues have raised is the provision of policing contracts with local authorities. Each council would negotiate a local policing contract with the police authority, based on an agreed local policing plan and a minimum service agreement. The contract would specify the level of funding for the police authority and set out the minimum deployment of police and community support officers in each district or borough.

We must also abolish the byzantine system of appointment for independent members of police authorities. We would remove the role of the Home Secretary and have a more transparent, locally controlled process that would be far more in the hands of local people. The Government are quiet on such issues, but why are they not thinking more boldly about how to make police authorities and other structures more accountable?

Photo of Rob Marris Rob Marris Labour, Wolverhampton South West

I invite the hon. Lady to visit the west midlands, which has the largest police force outside London. We have neighbourhood policing, with operational command units—as we call them, although other forces call them basic command units—that work well and provide the local focus. She might need more information about the work of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, because the police are intimately involved in local area network arrangements—which we have pioneered in Wolverhampton—and I think that ultimately there will be more accountability in policing budgets. The devolving of power is already working well in our large police force, so amalgamations in the greater west midlands are driven by the needs of forces such as Warwickshire for the specialist services to which she refers.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

My point was that such issues should be locally determined. In some areas, it is right and proper that forces work together, but the west midlands is geographically different from the area that would be created by linking Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge, with far greater numbers of people involved.

Fire services have been the predominant issue in the debate. Ironically, the Conservatives have supported the Fire Brigades Union's line. Mrs. Spelman has not yet revealed whom she intends to support in the Conservative leadership contest, but perhaps she has given us a little clue today.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

As a Conservative MP and former member of the FBU, I can say that I am proud of my links to the FBU, which does a fantastic job for its members.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

That is an interesting observation and perhaps evidence of a lurch to the left by the Conservatives.

As the Minister said, the impetus for fire service reform came from the Bain review, but it focused on the need for more fire prevention, rather than just firefighting, and that can be achieved only by a community-based force. Bain specifically advised against regional reorganisation and instead proposed regional co-operation. He suggested that co-operation could achieve all the benefits without major organisational structure change. However, the Government's response ignored Bain's advice and set out to establish regional fire authorities as part of regional assemblies. Once the wheels came off the plan for elected regional assemblies, the Government ploughed ahead regardless. Had fire services been accountable to elected regional assemblies, that would have dealt with the democratic deficit created by an unelected tax-levying body, but without the democratisation of regional government the major structural reorganisation has little genuine benefit for local people.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I commiserate with the hon. Lady on her present ill health. I have listened carefully to her argument about the breakdown in the logic behind reorganisation. Did she say that her party is consulting on whether it should still be committed to elected regional assemblies, or is it still committed to them? I would be grateful for clarification.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

We are consulting on what we should do following the north-east referendum. We accept that the proposals on offer were rejected, but many other options are possible. Some form of regional government is necessary to democratise the present systems. That could be achieved in many different ways and I do not wish to prejudge our review by discussing it in detail now. I would be happy to discus the issue in detail with the hon. Lady at some other point.

The Minister mentioned national resilience, but serious emergencies require serious contingency planning that would, by its very nature, require co-operation between services. Where would the process stop? Does the Minister suggest that it would be worth consolidating all functions into one giant structure, just in case it needs to be run from Downing street? That cannot be the way forward, although I recognise the Government's tendency towards it. Is it necessarily any more resilient to have nine large control centres instead of 46 smaller ones? The impact of taking one centre off-line would be huge.

There is no perfect solution, but compulsory regional fire control rules out the possibility of co-operation between emergency services. The hon. Members for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew) have spoken already about the successful tri-service control centre in Gloucestershire. Would that have to be broken up under the current proposals? It looks as though it would.

The regionalisation of fire services would break the links with local communities, and the same would be true of policing. We need a fire service that is much more integrated in communities, especially if we want it to deal more with prevention. What about the Divali prevention of fire campaigns that are almost certainly going on up and down the country at present? Should the one in Bradford be run by a city somewhere on the other side of the country? I do not think so. That is not the way to deal with local considerations.

Photo of Andrew Turner Andrew Turner Shadow Minister (Cabinet Office)

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister's example of the way in which regional planning works was drawn from London? London is one place, unlike the south-east, as the Department of Health recognises. The Department has offered the Isle of Wight the opportunity to continue to have its own ambulance service, because it realises that the south-east is not simply one place.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. There is a tendency to view structures that work in one area as easily transplantable elsewhere. We see that with many of the Government's ideas about city regions in the north. Their ideas might work perfectly well in some areas of the north of England, but they will not transfer well to the south-east or east of the country where the relationship between cities and rural areas is not the same. We have to accept that the one-size-fits-all approach will not deliver the improvements in service delivery that we want. It will certainly not improve democratic accountability.

There seems to be no obvious logic to the structural reorganisation proposed for ambulance services. The Government seem to have picked a random size for new ambulance trusts that ties in with none of the other tiers of administration in the national health service. Instead of reforming ambulance services into arbitrarily sized organisations, the Government should consider integrating services with hospitals and emergency care. How will it be possible to do anything sensible if trusts are not coterminous with anything already in the system? A modern ambulance service is not just about driving injured people to hospital; it is staffed by highly trained paramedics who increasingly treat casualties at the scene.

The proposed move will tear a hole in any attempt to connect the ambulance service to the rest of the NHS. Why move to larger authorities? There is no evidence to suggest that it would be more efficient or would save more lives. We have already heard quotes from the chief executive of the Staffordshire ambulance trust, who is extremely concerned. We should listen carefully to people on the ground with experience of running such services who say that a move to larger structures will not help to improve the service to patients.

Photo of Kevan Jones Kevan Jones Labour, North Durham

I can give the hon. Lady an excellent example from the north-east, where the North East ambulance service has been in existence for nearly 10 years. It cuts across two strategic health authorities and numerous trusts. In the summer, I had the honour of spending a night shift with the paramedics, who found none of the problems that the hon. Lady is outlining. Furthermore, more money was coming in for new technology, which helped them to do their job.

Photo of Sarah Teather Sarah Teather Shadow Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I am sure that the North East ambulance service does an extremely good job, but I return to my earlier point: the fact that something works well in the north-east does not mean that the same structure will work well if it is applied somewhere else.

The Government are reorganising all our public services, but that makes a mockery of the claim that the new terms of reference for Sir Michael Lyons will deal with all the possible things that might come under local government. By the time he gets around to considering them, there will not be much left for local government to do.

We are holding the wrong debate; we are talking about structures when we should be talking about accountability. The debate should be about how we can fit structures into our elected organisations and then put them under the control of elected representatives. Our party is conducting a major review of how local services should be delivered and by whom, but at the heart of our thinking will be the principle of accountability. We have learned that when 77.9 per cent. of people vote against something that we want to do, we do not plough ahead and do it regardless. Taking note of those views is accountability. That is what we should do when we are elected and it is something that the Government need to learn.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich 1:54, 12 October 2005

I declare an interest, as I have recently been invited to take on the chairmanship of the Fire Protection Association

Photo of Rob Marris Rob Marris Labour, Wolverhampton South West

Did my right hon. Friend accept?

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I have accepted and the position has been approved by the advisory committee on appointments for former Ministers, with the caveat that I should not indulge in the lobbying of Ministers for a year from the time that I ceased to be one. I hope that nothing I say now will be seen as lobbying Ministers.

I am astonished that the Opposition should table a motion about the emergency services with no reference, let alone a tribute, to the performance of our emergency services who responded so magnificently to the problems that occurred on 7 and 21 July[Interruption.] I make that comment only about the motion on the Order Paper. I was about to offer an apology to Mrs. Spelman because I was unable to be in the Chamber for the first few minutes of her speech as I was at another meeting. She may have corrected that—[Interruption.] I was making the point that the motion setting out the Opposition position made no reference whatever to the performance of the emergency services, and I stand by that.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

The hon. Lady should listen to this. Even more astonishing is the fact that the Opposition have drawn a veil of silence over the proposals for reorganisation that they touted over the previous three years. How many times can we recall hearing the Opposition criticise our arrangements for enhancing and improving the capacity of our emergency services to cope with whatever might be thrown at them with the continued refrain, "You aren't doing as well as the Americans. You ought to have a department of homeland security."? How many times did Opposition spokesmen tell us to set up a department of homeland security? Why are they now so silent about that? I give way to the hon. Lady and invite her to comment on why the Opposition have forgotten, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the performance of the American department of homeland security, their espousal of such a structure in the UK?

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I want to address the accusation that we had not paid tribute to the work of our emergency services. The right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that he had not been in the Chamber for the whole of my speech but, before he came in, I made the point that at least two Members present had been directly involved and served with the emergency services and I said how much I respected those who put their lives on the line. It is dangerous for the right hon. Gentleman to call into question our sincerity on that point when he was not present. As for the rest of his diatribe, I think he was trying to change the subject. He is a respected specialist on the whole subject of local government and its remit, but I wish that he would save his ire and frustration about what is happening and direct it at his own Front Bench.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

The hon. Lady's intervention entirely ignored my point, which was that the Opposition motion made no reference to the performance of the emergency services and paid no tribute to them. That is an interesting comment. Secondly, her feeble attempt to skate over her party's commitment to an expensive and unproven reorganisation of the structure for oversight of the emergency services is also interesting—

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I am delighted to give way to the hon. Gentleman, who put that proposition for reorganisation to me many times over the past two years. I look forward to hearing his justification.

Photo of Mark Harper Mark Harper Conservative, Forest of Dean

I was not an MP until May this year, so I do not think that I did.

To refer to the right hon. Gentleman's earlier point, I notice that the Government amendment to our motion pays no particular tribute to our emergency services, so perhaps his criticism of my hon. Friend should be directed at the Treasury Bench.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. My eyesight is not good and I mistook him for another hon. Member.

This is an Opposition day debate. It is the Opposition's motion and I stand exactly by what I said. Not only did the motion pay no tribute to the work of the emergency services, or even mention it, but the Opposition have entirely glossed over their misconceived commitment to a major, expensive reorganisation to create a department of homeland security which, as we have seen in the American example, did not perform as well as its advocates on the Conservative Benches might have liked to think it would by comparison with the performance of our emergency services on 7 July, to which my hon. Friend the Minister

Photo of Sylvia Heal Sylvia Heal Deputy Speaker

Order. Before the debate gets—dare I say?—a little heated, I remind all hon. Members that we should be discussing the Opposition motion and the Government amendment.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to say a little about the fire service. As the Government amendment rightly highlights, the fire service has been making important progress in achieving reductions in fire deaths and improving safety. That is the overriding objective. The new legislation, which I had the privilege of taking through the House during my time as a Minister, established a new priority of saving lives, as one of the service's key objectives, as my hon. Friend the Minister rightly said. Fire prevention is now absolutely on the agenda as a prime responsibility, something that had not been conceived of when the 1947 legislation was introduced.

Photo of Rob Marris Rob Marris Labour, Wolverhampton South West

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the West Midlands fire service has been doing preventive work for many years, has one of the best records in that respect and is one of the largest fire services in the area? Large fire services can do very good preventive work and I pay tribute to the brothers and sisters in the West Midlands fire service for what they have done.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I wholeheartedly concur with my hon. Friend, who rightly highlights the good work that is being done in a number of fire authorities. Such work is being accelerated as a result of the White Paper, the legislation and the additional funds, to which my hon. Friend the Minister rightly alluded, that are being used to promote fire safety and ensure the greater installation of smoke alarms, particularly in vulnerable people's homes. It is astonishing that the hon. Member for Meriden referred to cuts in expenditure on emergency services. When the Conservative party was in government, the fire service did not have the equipment that it now has to deal with the new dimension of terrorist incidents.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I will give way in a moment, but I remind the hon. Gentleman about the underfunding of the fire service in the past. He will know about that only too well, but he will also know that the new dimension programme has been fully funded by the Government.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman; I ask him to restrain himself.

As a result, fire authorities are now far better equipped to cope with a range of disasters, including flooding, with high-volume water pumps, and rescuing people from collapsed buildings, with urban search and rescue equipment. They are also getting additional funds to ensure that fire prevention and fire safety work can be given the priority that it deserves. That was not the pattern when the Conservative party was in power, and it is outrageous for the hon. Member for Meriden to suggest that the funding has been cut by a Government who have been fully funding the response to the new pressures on the fire service.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

Perhaps we could talk about cuts today in Hertfordshire. Given the lack of funding, two brand-new appliances will not be required any more because the Government are closing two retained fire stations. Those are cuts today, not cuts eight years ago.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman makes a great mistake if he goes from the particular to the general. Obviously, there will be changes and it is right that there should be. The old arrangements were inflexible and made it difficult for fire brigades to change the deployment of crews and equipment to meet today's threats. Those arrangements, based on 1940s legislation—he will be familiar with that—emphasised the protection of buildings. Although that is important, we believe that the saving of lives is more important. The new legislation rightly puts the focus on saving lives and fire authorities throughout the country are reviewing their arrangements to put a greater emphasis on that.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I have given way to the hon. Gentleman, and I want to make progress.

Yes, the result is that there are changes. I have accepted the removal of one appliance from a station in my constituency, having looked carefully at the figures, which show, as the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority demonstrated, that there would be a better prospect of saving lives by moving an appliance from one of the Greenwich stations to Sidcup because today's threats are different from those that existed in the 1940s, when a lot of the provisions were initially put in place. Any good service must seriously consider the need for change to take account of today's pressures and threats. We cannot ossify arrangements based on past patterns. Some change is necessary, but to talk about cuts is nonsense when the Government are increasing funding, as my hon. Friend the Minister has stressed.

I want to talk about a little more about fire control, because some hon. Members made some misleading comments in their contributions on the issue. The fire control arrangements are designed to ensure that every fire authority in the country has the use of the best modern equipment to ensure that it can deploy resources as effectively as possible to meet whatever risks are faced. The new technology is not a leap into the unknown, as some people have suggested when referring to IT.

Those who have any doubt about the technology should visit fire brigades such as Norfolk or Merseyside, where it is already used successfully. It allows a lot more than is possible in most other areas. It allows automatic identification of where the call is coming from. In Merseyside, that has now been extended to cover calls from mobile phones, which present an increasing pressure on the service. It also allows the automatic mobilisation of the appliances that are closest placed to respond and ensures that the crew in the cab will automatically receive a printout that identifies the hazards that they might encounter at the site that they are going to. Every fire authority in the country should benefit from those state-of-the-art arrangements. Fire control will ensure that they do.

It has been suggested that local knowledge will be lost. Such knowledge has not been a major factor for fire control operations for many years since computerised gazetteering was introduced. Even in the existing authorities, it is unrealistic to expect a fire control operator to know the location of every village and town in a county, or every street in London, which already has a region-wide fire control operation. That is not possible. The new technology obviates that need because it presents the operator with a screen showing exactly where the call is coming from and where the appliance best placed to respond is. The red herring about local knowledge should be set aside.

The other factor, which cannot be set aside, is the huge savings that are possible by introducing the new system across the country, with a smaller number of much more efficient control centres, thus allowing the savings to be ploughed back into fire prevention—exactly the thing that we know will save lives.

The hon. Member for Meriden looks doubtful, but one of the statistics that I remember best from my period as the Minister responsible for the fire service is that half the people who die in domestic fires are dead before the fire brigade is alerted to the incident. However good they are—they are very good at responding to incidents—and however quickly they get to the site, they cannot save those lives. Prevention is critical if those lives are to be saved. If, as a result of making savings on fire control, some of those resources can be used to put more smoke alarms into vulnerable people's homes and to carry out more fire prevention work in the first place, more lives will saved. This is a sensible policy that is designed to give the best results.

Photo of Caroline Spelman Caroline Spelman Shadow Secretary of State (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)

I looked doubtful because I do not see the logic in the right hon. Gentleman's argument. If Norfolk, which he cited, is so successful with new technology, it does not automatically follow that things need to be restructured regionally. We could simply share best practice. He may be happy to lose one of the two appliances that he mentioned, but fire stations have gone from two to one appliance overnight throughout the west midlands. That is a cut.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I am afraid that the hon. Lady is exaggerating and not giving an accurate picture. I considered that argument very carefully, as any hon. Member would when presented with a proposal to remove an appliance, and I was convinced, when I had scrutinised and questioned the authority, that that was the right decision. Hon. Members should do that and not have a knee-jerk reaction and exaggerate, as the hon. Lady has done in implying that appliances are being taken out all over the west midlands. That is simply not the case.

The Norfolk technology is good, but it did not extend to mobile phones when I saw it. Merseyside has moved on and its technology covers them. Clearly, we need the best modern technology, with the greatest capacity, installed throughout the country, but it would simply not be economic to do so on the basis of the existing 46 control centres. In many cases, they are not organised well to respond. They may have sufficient staff to respond to any possible incident, but many of them will not have much work to do for a lot of the time because of the relatively small volume of calls.

For example, I looked at the figures for the Isle of Wight and I could see that, on average, a control room operator would expect to deal with probably no more than one incident in the entire shift on which they were on duty, because it is necessary to have sufficient staff on duty at any one time to cope with potential surges. That is simply not economic, and that is why the Isle of Wight has recognised that it cannot go on as an independent fire control centre.

By contrast, London is already organised on a regional basis and the fire control centre covers a much larger number of calls, so it is operating on a far more cost-effective basis. It gives as good a service, if not a better one, and does so with significant savings that then allow more focus on fire safety. I talk to the chief of the London fire brigade from time to time and he strongly emphasises his service's real commitment to driving down the number of lives lost unnecessarily in fires. That commitment is the result of the Government's policy and of the potential for making savings through an intelligent approach towards facing today's risks.

I thought that the speech of the hon. Member for Meriden and the Opposition motion were among the feeblest that I have come across in the House for a very long time. They indicate thinking that is stuck in the past and that shows no recognition of the failure of their abortive approach to reorganisation and to a department of homeland security. They show no willingness to engage in the serious debate—not the token debate with Opposition motions that are not worth the paper they are written on—about how to improve the fire service, save lives and ensure that we have the best and most effective service.

I hope that the House will reject the opportunistic Opposition motion and treat it with the contempt that it deserves.

Photo of Tim Boswell Tim Boswell (Also PPS To the Chairman of the Party), Work & Pensions & Welfare Reform, Parliamentary Private Secretary To Francis Maude and Shadow Minister for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform, Conservative Party, Shadow Spokesperson (Business, Innovation and Skills), Shadow Spokesperson (Work and Pensions) 2:11, 12 October 2005

I am grateful to have the opportunity to participate in the debate and to follow Mr. Raynsford. He at least has the benefit of knowing a good deal about this subject and made aspects of his case quite strongly. I would say to him and to the House that I take a pragmatic view of administrative structures; I want structures that work and that can handle and make the best use of modern technology in the interests of my constituents and others. We all move about the country, and we do or do not benefit from the situation in the area in which we happen to be at the time.

I am in no sense, and never have been, what I would call a visceral anti-regionalist. I confirm the analysis of my hon. Friend Mrs. Spelman on the genesis of the original Government office structure. I was Department of Trade and Industry Whip at the time that that was being thought about, and it was very much a matter of co-ordinating the national effort of the various Departments in the regions rather than seeking to take over or administer major aspects of service delivery. Indeed, I pursued that strategy as a Minister in relation to some educational components in the process and later, as an Agriculture Minister, I worked closely with a regional structure. Although such a strategy is not unthinkable, I take odds with it when it brings in large elements of additional bureaucracy and further structures that may not be appropriate and that may dilute the democratic structures in place. My interest is in sensible co-operation to achieve the right technical result, not in fitting the services to a regional template irrespective of the benefit or otherwise. That is what motivated me to participate in the debate, and I wish to make several points to support my view.

I am genuinely concerned about the nature of the consultation. It is perhaps no good for us as Members of Parliament to get pompous about that, but it is something of an outrage that the major proposals for the fire and ambulance services, the wider health service and the police authorities were not notified to us by communications from Secretaries of State. Indeed, if the proposals were all part of an integrated strategy that the Government wish to pursue, they might at least have told us.

The problem goes further. I genuinely believe that consultation can be beneficial and that it is sometimes a good idea to ask Members of Parliament, as the primary elected representatives for their constituencies, to participate in the process. That is as much in the Government's interest as it is in ours. I know that the Minister is an entirely reasonable fellow, and I hope that he will want to take some of these points on board.

Photo of Philip Hollobone Philip Hollobone Conservative, Kettering

I arrived back at the House this week to find that I had been sent through the post—I am sure that my hon. Friend has received it too—the latest newspaper from the Northamptonshire police force. Its front page contains the headline "Getting ready for a merger", but that is the first communication that any Northamptonshire MP has received on the subject. We are informed:

"Northamptonshire Police is working closely with the four other forces in the East Midlands Police Region to respond to the Government's edict".

The chief constable is reported as saying:

"These are very difficult times for us all and people throughout the organisation are going to be very worried about their future."

That entirely reinforces my hon. Friend's point.

Photo of Tim Boswell Tim Boswell (Also PPS To the Chairman of the Party), Work & Pensions & Welfare Reform, Parliamentary Private Secretary To Francis Maude and Shadow Minister for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform, Conservative Party, Shadow Spokesperson (Business, Innovation and Skills), Shadow Spokesperson (Work and Pensions)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and Northamptonshire colleague for making that point. I am delighted that his voice reinforces my argument. That is exactly the concern that we have. It would not have been too difficult for Ministers to have approached us, and it might even have been in their interests to do so.

Sometimes I wonder whether the Government consult only on the unimportant issues and that the level of consultation, or the time provided for it, is in inverse proportion to the importance of the subject. One of the problems is that we have not really seen a base of evidence, and it might be quite different for the different services. It would be useful to have an overview and independent analysis, not least because of the concerns being expressed powerfully in this debate.

I wish to make a specific point. I know a little about resilience, because as an 18-year-old I wrote a paper on the subject that was sent to the Home Office in 1961. I suffer gravely from not having a BBC service that is particularly relevant to where I live. I live in Northamptonshire, but receive the service from Oxford and the regional service is from the south, so I see a lot about shipping in the Solent. If I am to be put into an east midlands mould, I will need an east midlands service if there is a difficulty or an emergency. That must be integrated right up to the borders of the services that operate in the area. I mention the point, because I think it is a consideration that the Minister is nodding at.

The final point of the general considerations that I put to Ministers is my worry at the frenetic pace of change. I am conscious that others wish to speak and that we do not want to extend the debate to cover the whole field of public services, but I will say two words about health provision more generally in a moment. As the Government mature, I notice that they are going through a second or even third cycle of change. In these respects, they now seem to be quickening the pace, because they want to produce solutions or to save money, as colleagues have said. In other cases, the second or third reorganisation merely adds to the confusion of staff and service users alike. I think that it was Petronius who said nearly 2,000 years ago, "Every time that we were just about to get somewhere, they reorganised us and then we had to start the process all over again."

Photo of Maria Miller Maria Miller Shadow Minister (Education)

I would like to add a little depth to this point. I am concerned about how dismissive Ministers and Labour Members have been about the concerns of the Fire Brigades Union. I recently received a delegation from the Hampshire FBU and heard its concerns about regional control rooms in our area and particularly about the effects that they would have on my constituency. It would affect rural areas and lead to the loss of staff between now and when the regional control rooms are introduced. Does my hon. Friend agree that such concerns should not be so readily dismissed?

Photo of Tim Boswell Tim Boswell (Also PPS To the Chairman of the Party), Work & Pensions & Welfare Reform, Parliamentary Private Secretary To Francis Maude and Shadow Minister for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform, Conservative Party, Shadow Spokesperson (Business, Innovation and Skills), Shadow Spokesperson (Work and Pensions)

That is precisely the point. Many of us listen to FBU members and talk to watches in fire stations, and we can always learn from that process. I am sure that Ministers will want to pick up the concerns that are being vigorously expressed to my hon. Friend and me. All I am really saying to Ministers is, "Don't push your luck; don't take it too far; and don't rush it. Consult and think about it."

I wish to expand briefly on that point in relation to the particular services. To pick up my hon. Friend's point, there is still a major problem with the fire services. Major, wrenching and difficult changes are already taking place for fire service provision, and they will be politically difficult as well as difficult for the personnel involved.

My hon. Friend Mr. Bone, who is not in the Chamber, eloquently explained the problems of Rushden fire station during a Westminster Hall debate yesterday. We have comparable problems in Daventry, because there is a move towards more part-time staffing to cover the station's work, which is causing considerable worry. If one superimposes the modernisation of control systems and the possible ultimate merger into a much wider regional structure on top of that, it is a matter of concern.

My hon. Friend Mr. Hollobone clearly expressed some of the concerns in Northamptonshire about the police. Some of those concerns are practical, and I thought that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich made something of a point about the matter. Even within the shire structure we do not always have perfection.

It might amuse the House to hear that I was recently in one of my local police stations when a lorry driver who wanted to make a delivery came in. He said, "Where's Great Central Way?" I was a bit distracted because I was waiting for an appointment to discuss local policing matters, but when I became conscious that the chap at the desk was having difficulty, I said, "Why don't you try Woodford Halse? That's about 10 miles away." Of course that was exactly where the delivery was for—no one had spotted that the destination was not in the town itself.

I can translate my point to a consideration of ambulances. There was a difficult case recently involving a person who was injured in a ploughing match that was taking place in a field on the Warwickshire-Northamptonshire county boundary. Of course the judge who went to the assistance of the person who had fallen did not know the postcode of the location, although he did have a mobile phone—that is relevant to our consideration. He telephoned for assistance, but the terrestrial ambulances of both counties failed to get there and the air ambulance had to be brought in. However, the air ambulance is already served co-operatively by the counties of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.

Photo of Bill Cash Bill Cash Conservative, Stone

I am following my hon. Friend's remarks with great interest. Is he aware that there is strong resistance to the proposed merger of the ambulance service in Staffordshire, which came up during Prime Minister's questions? The real question is whether that will be effectively opposed by Staffordshire Labour Members, although I and others certainly oppose it, as we have shown in the early-day motion that we tabled yesterday.

Photo of Tim Boswell Tim Boswell (Also PPS To the Chairman of the Party), Work & Pensions & Welfare Reform, Parliamentary Private Secretary To Francis Maude and Shadow Minister for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform, Conservative Party, Shadow Spokesperson (Business, Innovation and Skills), Shadow Spokesperson (Work and Pensions)

It will be interesting to find out. I shall watch the situation, especially now that we have more varied representation in Northamptonshire. I shall refer to ambulance services in a moment.

To conclude my remarks on the police authority, I do not want it to be suggested that I am not interested in democratic control. We have a police authority and there has recently been a change of administration in the county council at county hall. The question of who would control and assume the chair of the police authority was a real political issue, but at least it was determined locally—as it should be—rather than regionally.

I made an intervention during the Minister's speech about the police. Their relationship with fire control rooms and, above all, the interoperability of services—I have some constituency involvement with Airwave—should be carefully watched. We need to ensure that the system works and Ministers should not over-claim what they are doing.

My main worries relate to the health agenda, on which I shall speak a little more widely. We must examine the more general consideration of the reorganisation of the national health service. I know that the Minister of State, Department of Health, Ms Winterton, will wind up the debate. A strong functional primary care trust covers most of my area and I have been engaged for some time in fairly delicate negotiations to insert the other part of my area, which is brigaded with Oxfordshire—across the county boundary—into that trust, so it is extraordinary that after we appeared to be getting somewhere and consultation was offered, the whole thing is now up in the air. We might well end up with a county-wide trust, although we do not know that yet. We have had no news from the Department of Health, so we have had to work things out for ourselves, although I have written to the Secretary of State for Health on the matter.

These things are not cost-free. My wife and I are involved with the re-provision of Brackley cottage hospital. My wife is a trustee and I am on one of the working groups. The matter might be worth an Adjournment debate one day, because it has gone on for 15 years. Every time that we seem to be getting somewhere, the NHS reorganises itself and the whole thing has to be started from scratch.

The situation is especially vicious in relation to provision for our ambulance services. I know about the quality of Staffordshire's service and the Minister will be aware of the high quality of the Two Shires ambulance trust—my domestic NHS ambulance trust—covering Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. It is a three-star trust of long standing that is run extremely well. It is almost the one service in my constituency for which we are not on the edge of things, as it is headquartered in the village of Deanshanger. Although that is more or less in the centre of the trust's area and at the edge of my constituency, at least it is in my constituency, instead of a substantial distance away.

The trust has worked especially well and should not be reorganised only for the reason that Ministers have decided that everything must be regionalised, with one bit going to south-east Buckinghamshire and another bit going to the east midlands. The trust would have to be dissolved before it could be reconstituted, so the operation would be doubly wrenching.

It would be likely that the service for my area would be reconstituted into a trust with fewer stars, or a less good record, so there is extreme concern about the process, which is compounded by worries about the speed of implementation. I attended the trust's annual meeting at which its senior management and chairman were under the impression that it might be asked to merge from next April, or that a shadow committee would be established with the aim of an implementation date not far into the future. That raises practical concerns about the compatibility of radios and equipment carried on vehicles, and, of course, control functions. Above all, we cannot have a situation in which people in my constituency or those of other hon. Members do not get the service that they deserve simply because the component bits of the service do not talk to each other, which is the fundamental worry set out in the motion.

My underlying concern is that decision making is being shifted from someone who is usually democratically accountable—or at any rate physically accessible in my county town—to a more distant, less accountable and less familiar regional body. It might be useful if I share with the House something of my personal situation, which is matched by that of many of my constituents.

I have lived in a village called Aynho for nearly 40 years. It is in the extreme south-west of both my constituency and Northamptonshire, so we are virtually the end point of the east midlands. For example, we are at the end point of the electricity grid network in the east midlands. It is a long way from the village to Cleethorpes. It is actually quite a long way from the village to Nottingham. My village is 60 miles from the House, but 100 miles from Nottingham. I am not sure that I would wish to substitute control from Northampton—or even London—with control from Nottingham. In fairness to the Minister, some of the journey from my village to Nottingham runs through my constituency. When one reaches the northern boundary of my constituency, one is halfway there, but Nottingham is still a long way away.

Let me explain how things work operationally. There are four postal regions in my constituency: first, Northampton, which is in the east midlands; secondly, Coventry, which is in the west midlands; thirdly, Milton Keynes—we have had real problems with BT employees not being able to recognise the post codes of people from there who ring in, because they go through to the wrong control room; and, fourthly, Oxfordshire. I live 300 yd within my constituency and have an Oxfordshire postcode, as have about 20 per cent. of my constituents. Oxfordshire is in the south-east, as is Milton Keynes. There are huge operational difficulties, including those that relate to the focus of operations. I touched on some of those. My area is not Greater London, a unitary or the west midlands. The pattern is complex and dispersed. People already live at great and extended distances from services.

There is something else to consider. We formed part of the Deputy Prime Minister's expansion plans and growth areas under the Milton Keynes and south midlands study, but that involves three regions—the south-east, the east midlands and eastern. Whatever Ministers come up with has to be sensitive to such considerations.

My other access route is to go from Milton Keynes to Crick in my constituency, which is a 25-minute drive down the old Roman road of Watling street. I move effortlessly from the south-east area of influence to the west midlands. Again, no regional template is sensitive to that. We have held the line of having an element of county control and involvement, although even that is sometimes distant. However, the situation is uneasy. My fear is that the drive for regionalisation or centralisation will make it worse.

The irony is that I have the great privilege and delight to live in the middle of England in a very pleasant area, yet my constituents and I face the paradox of also living on the edge of every service. They are uneasy about that and, frankly, increasingly alarmed, concerned and fed up.

Photo of Ronnie Campbell Ronnie Campbell Labour, Blyth Valley 2:31, 12 October 2005

My constituency is in the south of Northumberland and bridges on to the conurbations of Tyneside. At least 80,000 people live there. The next-door constituency of Wansbeck has about the same number. This part of Northumberland is fairly well populated compared with the rest, which is sparsely populated.

The county council and the chief fire officer have decided not merely to withdraw fire pumps, but to close fire stations. The proposal is to close two fire stations in my area that have been in existence for years. The Cramlington station covers the new town, which is a big area. It is on the edge of the town for the people to call on its services at any time. The old town of Blyth has a population of at least 39,000, and its fire station is also to close. There will be no retained fire pumps in those areas. Instead, they will be five miles upland in Wansbeck.

The plan is also to close the fire station at Morpeth, which has about 27,000 people. The station is in the town itself. Ashington fire station will close, too. It is on the edge of the town, which has about 26,000 people, if Newbiggin by the Sea and Bedlington are included. However, the chief fire officer, Mr. Hessler, says that he will build two state-of-the-art fire stations by the private finance initiative. We need to do our sums on PFI to see whether we save money or not. What we have come up with is that we will not save money and that the scheme will cost the council tax payers big time.

Never mind that, though, because Mr. Hessler is going to build the two big fire stations. One will be out in the country in Pegswood, which will cover Morpeth, Ashington, Newbiggin by the Sea and Bedlington and the other will be five miles outside my constituency to cover my 80,000 constituents. The idea is to regionalise the fire service and then to introduce a Bill to privatise it. That is the motive. I could say that the Tories will not privatise it, but I think that they will. It is a big worry.

Many years ago, when I was a young councillor, a guy was put in charge of the Northumberland ambulance service. Laurie Caper closed all the ambulance stations around Blyth Valley and Ashington, except for a couple of big ones. All the ambulances were put in those two stations. At times, they could not get through the traffic to the stations and response times were extended. Years later, instead of billeting ambulances somewhere on a roadside, which the ambulance service did for a long time—the ambulances were told where to wait for a call—it decided to put them in the fire stations in Blyth, Cramlington and so on. It served a purpose because we got a fire station back, but that is all up in the air now. Where will the ambulance service go in Northumberland? It is a big worry.

The Government say that it is up to the county council. As far as they are concerned, it is in charge and they have nothing to do with it. I have sent the Minister a letter and a map outlining the problem. Response times will increase. Perhaps the chief fire office is going to put two jet-propelled rockets on the side of the fire engines to get them to emergencies in Blyth quicker.

We are losing out. Hundreds have signed a petition in Blyth because people say, "Wait a minute. Our fire station looks after 39,000." That may not be many compared with other constituencies. Hon. Members should tell me whether I am getting a bit of luxury. Is it acceptable for one or two fire appliances to cover 100,000 people? That is what we have had in the south-east of Northumberland.

On top of that, Mr. Hessler wants to cut 28 full-time firemen as part of the regionalisation. Those will not be redundancies, but natural wastage. He says, "But behold. We are going to have retained firemen." Well, that is all right. We know what retained firemen do. However, a member of the Fire Brigades Union told me last week that they have retained firemen in Ponteland, in the constituency of Mr. Atkinson. An incident happened, but the retained firemen could not get to it because they were off working somewhere else. The fire engine from Blyth had to go all the way up to Ponteland to fight the incident. We are closing stations, removing pumps and getting rid of full-time firefighters. We are expected to rely on retained firemen, but we cannot because they do other jobs. We must look at that problem.

I do not have a problem with other aspects of what the Government are doing. I understand that we need to modernise, but we cannot take vital services away from the public. It is always dodgy because if they are used to them being there, they feel safe. The fire service does a lot of other work, such as putting in fire alarms. Not so long ago it put a sprinkler into my mother's house. That is good and should be encouraged.

The recent national audit of Northumberland fire brigade gave it ratings of either excellent or good. It did not get fair or poor on anything. Although that service was excellent it was cut, and there will be only two fire stations. I would like to know what the Minister thinks about that. When he digs out my letter—it has been in his office for three weeks—he should investigate the situation. He should not rely on the chief fire officer, who will produce a biased report, as he did at the recent public meeting, but should seek the opinion of the Fire Brigades Union. I attended that public debate in New Hartley, and the chief fire officer lost hands-down. If I was not convinced before I went to the meeting I was when I left, because the FBU made a good case. Northumberland county council is making a grave mistake, and I urge Hessler to go back to where he came from—Noddyland, where he produced his Noddy policy.

Photo of Simon Burns Simon Burns Shadow Spokesperson (Health) 2:40, 12 October 2005

May I begin by thanking my hon. Friend Mrs. Spelman for giving us the opportunity to debate this extremely important issue, which is causing such grave concern to many of our constituents? I suspect that it worries not just constituents of Opposition Members but those of Government- supporting Members. I listened to the Minister with great care but without surprise. He made a fluent defence of a policy that I believe is indefensible. He sought to be constructive, and explained why he genuinely believes that the Government are doing the right thing to improve the services.

It is a pity that I cannot say the same of Sarah Teather. In the two years since she has become a Member of Parliament I have not had the experience—I choose my words carefully—of having to listen to one of her speeches.I certainly hope that I do not have to listen to another one in the next two years. With all the arrogance of immaturity, she typified the problems that the Liberal Democrats have experienced since the general election. They do not have a clue about who they are going to attack—the Conservatives or the Government—so they try dishonestly to grub up votes to enhance their political position. In typical Liberal Democrat fashion, therefore, the hon. Lady compromised—

Photo of Sylvia Heal Sylvia Heal Deputy Speaker

Order. I call the hon. Gentleman to order and ask him to address his remarks to the Opposition motion and the Government amendment.

Photo of Simon Burns Simon Burns Shadow Spokesperson (Health)

I am grateful for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The hon. Lady compromised by deciding to disagree with the motion and the Government amendment. She sought, in an extremely cheap way, to attack the Conservative decision to support the FBU, to which the motion refers, for trying to stop regionalisation of control centres. I have to tell the hon. Lady that in the grown-up world real people with depth and maturity support the point of view they believe in, whoever expresses it. We will support the FBU if we believe that its cause is right. We will support an improved service of fire protection for our constituents if that means opposing regionalisation. We do not blow in the wind and we do not take a view because we think that it might enhance our popularity. We take a view because we believe that it is right and is in the best interests of the people who send us here every four or five years.

I have grave concerns about the Government proposals. I am not convinced by the Minister's argument that they will save money that can be reinvested in the service to improve it for our constituents. I believe that the proposals are crude, and are part of an overall agenda for regionalisation. The money that will be saved will not necessarily be reinvested pound for pound in the fire services or the ambulance service. It will go into the Chancellor's depleted coffers to help tackle the growing economic crisis in the public finances. My county of Essex has a population of 1.5 million, and is one of the most densely populated areas in the country. We are extremely fortunate, as we have an excellent fire service, and I pay tribute to the dedicated men and women who work day in, day out to protect us and provide the security and safety that all citizens deserve.

The system works. The control centre is located in Essex, and the people who work in it are extremely familiar with the county. They can do their job to the highest standard, and that is what the service should offer. If it is to be submerged into an eastern region including Suffolk, Norfolk and perhaps Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire, that quality of service, local knowledge and the ability to respond effectively and efficiently to calls for help will be diminished because the area covered will be too great. My motto has always been "If it ain't broke don't try to fix it." I urge the Government to follow that motto, even at this late stage. They should display a little more humility. The Minister knows what he is talking about, as he has intimate knowledge of the fire services, having worked for them. That is unusual, however, and I believe that the policy was dreamed up and imposed by civil servants in Whitehall to fit a wider agenda of regionalisation and to try to save money on the side.

Essex ambulance service, which is first-rate, is experiencing similar problems. It has an extremely good chief executive who is sensitive to the county's changing needs and demands, and who will make sure that the service and its resources are used to maximum effect so that ambulances are available to respond to accidents, to perform other functions and to offer an excellent service to the people of Essex, including my constituents. However, it faces the melting pot, because there are proposals to regionalise it. If the argument is that there are other ambulance services in the eastern region that are not as efficient and effective as that service, it is not right that all the services should be merged and brought down to the lowest common denominator. They should all be brought up to the highest standard. However, it is not clear that that will be achieved by putting them all together in a single mammoth organisation.

I am not making a party political point, because there have been local government reorganisations under Governments of all persuasions. Some of those reorganisations were motivated by the tenet that bigger is better but after the ensuing problems and upheavals, and given the grievances of people who felt detached from the services they were using, it was recognised that that was not the right approach. As a result, the clock was turned back, and people sought to return to the original arrangements. If the Government are determined to pursue their proposals to the bitter end, I fear that they will destroy an efficient, effective service. They will not be here in a few years' time to make the decisions, but we will have to pick up the pieces and reverse the process by trying to return to the original service that met people's needs.

In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden for securing today's debate, which is our only meaningful opportunity to debate the issue on behalf of our constituents on the Floor of the House. Both Ministers on the Front Bench are eminently reasonable, and when they are on their own and are not being bullied or pressurised by their political peers and civil servants, they should think again about this debate and be man and woman enough to admit that maybe they have not got it completely right and that maybe the policy is not necessarily the right way forward. They should be prepared to be magisterial and think again, and my constituents would be extremely grateful if they were to do so.

Photo of John Martin McDonnell John Martin McDonnell Labour, Hayes and Harlington 2:50, 12 October 2005

As secretary of the FBU parliamentary group, I refer hon. Members to my declaration in the Register of Members' Interests. I do not object to hon. Members on both sides of the House relating views that they may have heard from FBU members.

As an aside, the quality of speeches, including the speech by Sarah Teather and the intervention by the Minister, has been high.

I thank the Government for the way in which they have drafted the amendment, because I have spent this week looking for something that I can support—I can support the amendment, provided that the ministerial winding-up speech does not contradict it.

All hon. Members agree with the outline business case statement that the existing arrangements for delivering core services, including call handling and dispatch functions, within the fire service are perceived to be excellent, and almost every hon. Member who has spoken has congratulated the staff and the service on how they currently operate. My right hon. Friend Mr. Raynsford has related the strength of feeling after 7 July about the excellent performance of our emergency services in London.

If we are to move forward, we must ensure that we do so carefully and that we take the professionals with us. The outline business case urges caution:

"There is no other example of a regional service being provided in this way."

The reform is among the most novel ever seen in this country, and it is important that we get the history right. It is true that the Bain report did not recommend regionalisation, and it is also true that Mott Macdonald made two recommendations—its first recommendation included 27 centres; its second recommendation included nine centres. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich can correct me, if I am wrong, but I thought that Mott Macdonald's first recommendation was for 27 centres.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

I cannot recall the precise number. My hon. Friend has implied that the recommendation is not supported by experience. Will he accept—I am sure that he will—that London already has a regional control centre? It provides an extremely good service compared with some of the smaller services outside London, which would offer an improved service if they were to achieve London's cost-effectiveness.

Photo of John Martin McDonnell John Martin McDonnell Labour, Hayes and Harlington

Of course I accept that point, and in my experience the service in London is very good. However, the business case points out the lack of co-ordination across all services at the regional structural level. The proposals are novel because they will bring together all services within the regional structure.

Over time, successive Governments have received different advice on the matter, and we must address the basic questions. Will the proposal work? Does it have the confidence of the people whom we will require to deliver the service? Will the reform be cost-effective? If it is not cost-effective, what is the fall-back position?

The business case states that the reform is a "high risk" venture. It assesses the risk of

"delay or even total project failure" as "high", with a "very high" impact if the project fails. Why does it draw that conclusion? Although the project is not unique, novel or innovative, the business case points out that

"the recent history of delivering IT/change projects in the public sector has demonstrated a less than 50 per cent. success rate."

The business case addresses the point that the scheme's high IT content may bring it close to failure. Scepticism at such an early stage is constructive, because it means that we must address the issues.

Does the project command the confidence of the professionals themselves? The FBU's view does not require reiteration, because we have heard it from both sides of the House. Front-line firefighters are deeply sceptical about whether the scheme will work, about the cost savings and, as my hon. Friend Mr. Campbell has said, about whether it will lead to privatisation. No matter what assurances the Government make, we must accept the firefighters' concerns.

What about the organisations on the ground which were consulted about the business case? I have a copy of the report on the views of the regional management boards that was sent to Ministers. I am not sure whether I should have this report, because I am not sure whether the business case has been produced. I do not know whether I might be arrested under the new terrorism legislation, but let us hope that whatever the Home Secretary is drafting today, it does not concern the leakage of documents.

Yorkshire and Humberside regional management board said that it

"does not accept that the OBC"— the business case—

"as currently presented, is achievable financially and practically", and it called

"upon ODPM to withdraw the present proposals and the OBC and to re-consult".

The East of England regional management board was concerned that the business case was unable

"to provide any financial information that related to individual fire authorities."

The East Midlands regional management board was concerned

"about some of the assumptions on which the national OBC is based".

The West Midlands regional management board was concerned because there was

"far too little detail, particularly relating to financial matters, for any commitment to be made at this stage."

The list goes on and on. The South East regional management board stated that

"issues affecting the success and affordability of this project as well as the statutory responsibilities . . . are drawn to the attention of the ODPM's fire control team".

The South West regional management board bluntly indicated that it was unable to accept the business case. Gloucestershire fire and rescue authority was

"unable to support the OBC".

Somerset county council stated:

"the Outline Business Case has not been made on the basis of the information provided."

Dorset fire and rescue authority stated that it was

"not satisfied that deliverability, affordability or value for money have been demonstrated in the Outline Business Case."

Cornwall county council stated:

"The Outline Business Case is not accepted".

And Avon fire and rescue authority stated:

"We cannot support this Outline Business Case."

I must say that the North East regional management board continued to support the project, to which the Government's response was, "Noted with thanks".

The business case makes it clear that neither the front-line firefighters nor the regional management boards, who must deliver the project, were convinced by the argument. I worry that if they were not convinced, then the proposals will not be successful, and that the lack of confidence in the deliverability of the project will undermine our assurance to our constituents that the Government are providing the necessary services to protect their safety and the lives of their families.

There are genuine concerns about costs. Some of the figures about savings that the Government have quoted over time have also come into dispute. My understanding is that in June the estimated cost of the project stood at £988 million.

Photo of John Martin McDonnell John Martin McDonnell Labour, Hayes and Harlington

I am grateful for that confirmation.

The Minister has said that the savings will be £20 million a year. In that case, how many years of savings will be required on the basis of the total project cost? My understanding is that the savings that the Government have identified do not take into account the initial investment made up front by the Government. A whole range of other financial details have been questioned by the regional management boards. At the moment, the £20 million-a-year savings look fragile against the initial investment.

That leads on to another concern. If these savings are achieved, where will the money be found if there is a lack of confidence and therefore cost overruns? There are two options—increases in the council tax or cuts in the fire service. I cannot see the Treasury acceding to any additional Government subsidy on such a Government project, given that it has been fairly brutal to other departmental projects that have not delivered the goods.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising these matters. There is legitimacy in some of the concerns that were expressed initially. Obviously, the world has moved on for many people.

On savings, we are putting the money up front to build the new regional control centres. If we did not, we would still have to spend a lot of money on modernising the existing centres. The additional cost is £74 million. The overall cost is £988 million. The savings will come after the end of the project. I will write to my hon. Friend to explain the detail, and put a copy in the Library for other colleagues.

Photo of John Martin McDonnell John Martin McDonnell Labour, Hayes and Harlington

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I would be extremely grateful if he could include the detail on whether the costs exclude depreciation, full capital costs, migration costs, the cost of buildings maintenance rehabilitation, the cost of patching up the current system until the new one comes online, and the write-off costs for the existing system. That would give us the opportunity of having an honest and clear discussion about what the overall cost burden will be.

My anxiety is this. We had a debate this week about another major project—the third runway at Heathrow. Very sensibly, the Government have undertaken an assessment of the overall implications of the development of that project, which will be followed by the test of a peer review—that is, an independent assessment—of the proposals.

If the Government are convinced of their case, we need to take with us the professionals who will deliver the service. It therefore behoves the Government to have an independent review of the project very quickly and to report back to the House, or at least to have some form of peer review: an independent assessment that we can discuss and which—I agree with Mr. Boswell—we can then consult upon. We must give our constituents time to have the debate. So far, many of us feel that we have been excluded from it. Certainly, the FBU does, as do many of the regional management boards who are anxious about the proposals.

It is a shame that the proposals were announced during the recess. I understood the reason for that, given such a lengthy recess, but I did not support it. It should have happened before the recess to enable us to have a proper debate. Moreover, there should have been a full ministerial statement to debate instead of a patchwork of amendments.

I appeal to the Government to take a breathing space in which we can stand back. They should establish an independent review and engage in full consultation, so that if we move forward we do so on an agreed basis. The issue is too important to allow it to become a party political dispute.

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire 3:04, 12 October 2005

It is a pleasure to follow John McDonnell and to find myself agreeing with so much of what he said. No one would accuse me of being a fellow traveller with the Fire Brigades Union, but this is the second time on which I find myself campaigning alongside it. We recently campaigned together to prevent the much unwanted privatisation of the defence fire service, and I am glad to say that jointly we were able to persuade the Government to back off. I hope that on this occasion, too, we and the FBU will be able to persuade the Government to back off from proposals that are demonstrably unwelcome to ordinary people and throughout the fire service.

No county in England is as good an example of stealth regionalisation as our county of Wiltshire. We have heard today from many hon. Friends and Labour Members who feel that they are being regionalised unwittingly. In Wiltshire, we have an added conundrum. It is only two years since Her Majesty the Queen came to Devizes to open the state-of-the-art joint control service centre—the latest thing. One could phone into it for the fire service, police and ambulance and they would all turn up in good time. There are strong arguments for that. I personally was rather opposed, because it meant job losses in my constituency, in Chippenham, but I was persuaded none the less that it was the state of the art. The Government told us that the system was to be spread out across the nation. It cost £2.5 million to set up this beautiful new building, and there were significant difficulties in getting it going, but after much fighting the Government finally forced it through.

What is to happen now? All that state-of-the-art, new Labour so-called fantastic new service is to be swept away by three changes. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister announced the other day that it is going to do away with the fire control centre in Devizes and replace it with a remote, and, no doubt, much bigger one in Taunton—presumably at enormous cost. The Minister might like to respond to a detailed point, namely, that the lease on the building in Devizes runs until 2014, and the first escape date in the contract is 2012. If the contract is broken through the removal of the fire service from the control centre, the Government will face a substantial penalty clause. Will the Minister confirm whether the £988 million cost that we heard about includes the gigantic cost that will be involved in breaching that contract? I imagine that the same will apply to Gloucestershire, where a similar centre is being set up.

Next, we are told that because Wiltshire ambulance service is not as good as it ought to be, although it seems pretty good to me, it is to be amalgamated with Gloucestershire, which is apparently first class—that presumably means that there is a risk that we might be averaging down rather than up—and with something called the Avon ambulance service. I seem to recall that my right hon. Friend Mr. Gummer abolished Avon some 10 or 15 years ago. Why on earth we still have something called Avon ambulance service, and why it should be amalgamated with the excellent Wiltshire ambulance service, I cannot imagine.

That brings me on to a side curiosity. It seems like no time at all since I sat in the modest little health authority headquarters in Devizes, where I was told by the excellent chairman of the Wiltshire health authority that it was no longer big enough. The Wiltshire health authority was to be done away with, to be replaced with primary care groups, which became primary care trusts. Then a thing called the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire strategic health authority was established, although I cannot imagine what the heck it is supposed to be for. Now we hear that all the primary care trusts are to be brought together so that we end up with a body that is identical to the Wiltshire health authority. Sitting on top of that, we have—I went to visit it during the recess—a huge office, with hundreds of people employed in it, called the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire strategic health authority. Nobody knows what on earth it does or what it is for, but I could not find a place in the car park because of all the BMWs parked there. Hundreds of civil servants were sitting in that great office doing who knows what. We now have the Wiltshire health authority just as it was when I became an MP eight years ago, but with a fat layer of bureaucracy on top of it. That is precisely what would happen if we allowed the so-called regionalisation to go ahead. It would save no money and mean only a gigantic increase in bureaucracy.

The fire service has been pulled out—it is going to Taunton. Apparently, the ambulance service will be pulled out. It is said that we are not yet considering a regional ambulance control centre, but when I saw the chief executive during the recess, he would not give me a guarantee that it was not a logical consequence. We may well end up with something called the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire call centre.

Photo of Adam Afriyie Adam Afriyie Conservative, Windsor

I recently visited the Royal Berkshire ambulance trust. It has all the star ratings and is in a fabulous place. It appears that there is a plan to combine it with others in a regional centre. When something is working well and people are motivated and committed to it, what is the point of risking it, with life-threatening consequences?

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The only reason for doing such a thing is an ideological determination that big is beautiful. Labour loves reorganisation, hierarchies, structures and committees. We like good delivery of first-class services locally. My hon. Friend's point brings me to proposals about the police service.

In Wiltshire, we have the best police service in England, in the sense that our detection rate is extremely high and we have one of the lowest crime rates. Our proudest boast is that no murder has gone undetected in the county since the police service was set up in 1834. I believe that it was the first county police service to be established by my predecessor, Mr. Peel.

What do we have now? We are talking about doing away with the excellent Wiltshire police service because the service is apparently not big enough to cover anti-terrorism and all the other matters that the Minister mentioned. Surely we can get around that problem. Four officers in the Wiltshire police service deal with anti-terrorism. Surely they could happily co-operate with the four in Gloucestershire, the four in Dorset and the four in Somerset, without the proposed gigantic structural reorganisation. We could find ways of co-operating across borders.

I want the Minister to deal with a specific point about cross-border co-operation. If there is to be useful cross-border co-operation between services, whether fire, police or ambulance, why does it have be based on the Government's pre-set regional structure? For example, in Dorset, surely it would be reasonable for the police services of Bournemouth and Poole, which effectively constitute one built-up area, to co-operate. The one thing that the Government have laid out plainly is that the borders of the pre-set regions must be adhered to. There must be no cross-border co-operation. If the police in Bournemouth are caught co-operating with the police in Poole, my goodness, there would be all sorts of trouble. The Home Secretary would be down on them like a ton of bricks. However, if the police in Bournemouth co-operate with the police in the Scilly Isles, that counts as a good scheme according to the new Labour notion.

If we are considering the convenience of delivering emergency services, surely we should examine the geographical areas in which it is convenient to deliver them. If the south-west of England exists, it is Devon, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. The notion that one can go from Tewkesbury to the Scilly Isles and from Cricklade to Poole and call all that the south-west—if one stuck a drawing pin in Tewkesbury and turned the map around, the Scilly Isles would land in the city of Glasgow—is ridiculous. We in north Wiltshire ain't in the south-west of England. We may be in Wessex and the west country but we do not want to be in the south-west. We do not want our police service to be done away with in favour of some generalised south-west police force.

If we add to the regionalisation of the fire service that of the ambulance service, the police service, an astonishing series of changes in the health service, which constitute a form of regionalisation, and the nationalisation of some other county services, it amounts to the abolition of county government in England. It is no less than stealth abolition of our counties.

If one is interested in accountability, localism and allowing local people to determine the sort of services that they want, the best possible structure in which to do that is the county. The Labour party may not like it but I love the county of Wiltshire and I pledge to do what I can to fight to prevent its abolition by the mob opposite.

Photo of Mark Harper Mark Harper Conservative, Forest of Dean 3:14, 12 October 2005

It is noticeable that the Government are somewhat lacking Back-Bench support.

Mr. Raynsford has left the Chamber but he made some cheap remarks about whether this was an appropriate place to hold a debate. The Floor of the House of Commons is entirely the right place for the debate. If it were not for my hon. Friend Mrs. Spelman, we would not be having the debate and discussing matters of such great concern to our constituents.

My first point is about regions. As someone who represents a rural constituency in a rural county, I was struck by the fact that many of the contributions from the Government's supporters were London-centric. Providing emergency services in a densely populated capital city is different from providing them in a sparsely populated rural county. Clearly, it will be more expensive to provide the services in a rural county because of travelling times, the quality of the roads, response times and so on. That is evident to anyone who examines the matter.

I support my hon. Friends' comments about the sense of the regions and whether it would be sensible to allow co-operation across regional boundaries. The Forest of Dean constituency is on the Welsh border and on the border between the south-west region and the west midlands region. If there is to be co-operation, there is a great deal of sense in allowing it to happen across regional borders when that is appropriate. Moving to a regional structure appears to make that more difficult rather than easier.

My hon. Friend Mr. Boswell made a point about computer systems and postcoding. In my constituency, several postcodes cross borders, especially the Welsh border. Several organisations, including Government organisations such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, are sloppy about their use of postcode information. Many of my constituents who live on the Gloucestershire side of the border and have Newport postcodes find that Government organisations assume that an NP postcode means that they are in Wales and they get bilingual documents. That is not a heartening example. If Government organisations are sloppy about their use of data, it is not a serious problem when someone who does not want one gets a bilingual driving licence, but it is tremendously serious if a fire response takes a long time and lives are consequently lost. I ask the Minister to ensure that, whatever happens with technology, some of the problems that affect borders are tackled and that the technology can cope with that and does not make assumptions about postcoding and geographical locations.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

I assure the hon. Gentleman that the nine regional control centres will operate seamlessly because they will all have national geographical mapping data. If a problem occurred with one of the centres, any other could fill in the gap. Postcodes should not therefore have any effect.

Photo of Mark Harper Mark Harper Conservative, Forest of Dean

I am grateful for that reassurance.

Sarah Teather mentioned the Lyons review of local government. Now that it is considering local government functions as well as funding, and given the Government's proposals on regionalisation of emergency services, it is worth asking whether the Lyons review will examine regionalising other local government services. Hon. Members from all parties will perhaps be concerned about that.

I shall consider fire control briefly because I would rather spend more time on the police. As has already been said, we have an excellent tri-service control centre in Gloucestershire. I had the opportunity to visit it in the summer. In a serious incident such as the bombings in London on 7 July, the importance of all the emergency services working seamlessly was apparent. A control centre model whereby all three services and their senior and chief officers are located in close proximity appears to me, as a layman, a good model for providing seamless co-ordination. The Minister said in his response to Mr. Drew that he would deal with the reasons for the Government's view that the tri-service model was inappropriate. I may have missed the reply but if he did not deal with it, perhaps the matter could be tackled in the winding-up speech.

Photo of Martin Horwood Martin Horwood Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham

The hon. Gentleman might know that his comments about the tri-service model are supported by the Audit Commission report produced in July 2005, which listed the establishment of the tri-service centre in Gloucester as a key strength of the fire and rescue service and stated:

"The Fire Authority is consistently providing value for money, with one of the lowest costs per head of population in the country. When compared to its family group, best value indicators show there is good performance in many areas . . . There has been notable achievement against its high-level strategic objectives including the new Tri-Service Centre".

The following month, abolition was announced. Is not that particularly galling?

Photo of Mark Harper Mark Harper Conservative, Forest of Dean

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his timely intervention, which leads me to my next point on the merger proposals for the police service.

The report produced by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, which has driven the Government's thinking on this issue, makes the point that small rural forces are not very good, on the whole, at dealing with level 2 criminality—serious and organised crime—and at responding to terrorism. However, I understand that Her Majesty's inspectorate's last report on Gloucestershire found that

"Gloucestershire Constabulary has a comprehensive Level 2 capability, including surveillance . . . dedicated source handlers and force intelligence best practice".

Indeed, the National Crime Squad has adopted Gloucestershire's profiles as best practice, and has also said that Gloucestershire has been able to deal successfully with terrorism investigations, notably the recent Badat case.

It is entirely laudable and sensible to have more co-operation and collaboration between forces, and it would be much better if that were done on a bottom-up basis whereby forces collaborated regardless of regional boundaries, where it made sense to do so. It does not seem sensible to impose a one-size-fits-all, top-down model.

Photo of Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Opposition Deputy Chief Whip (Commons)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. Does he acknowledge that police forces co-operated in respect of the Fairford peace protesters—a very big policing operation? Gloucestershire police managed the operation with a range of other forces. My hon. Friend referred to a big terrorist operation that Gloucestershire police carried out, and they also conducted the Fred West murder investigation. Some of the very biggest crimes are being perfectly ably handled by the Gloucestershire police force. There is no reason whatever for it to be merged into a bigger force.

Photo of Mark Harper Mark Harper Conservative, Forest of Dean

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent intervention. Last week, he and my hon. Friend Mr. Robertson launched a petition for the people of Gloucestershire to sign to support the retention of our local police force.

I know that my hon. Friend will agree—he and I represent rural parts of the county—that we already have a problem ensuring that rural areas get a sufficient level of police cover, response and attention in comparison with the more urban parts of the county. If the Gloucestershire force were to be merged with, for example, Avon and Somerset police, which covers the large conurbation of Bristol, that pressure would intensify and the level of policing in rural areas would be under threat.

It is worth noting that, since 1997, the level of Government grant to pay for policing would, by itself, have led to a reduction in the number of officers in the Gloucestershire constabulary. The increase in the number of officers has all been funded by the increase in the council tax precept. Local people are paying for the extra officers, and my constituents expect to get their fair share of local policing. If we move towards a much larger regional force, we would be much less likely to get that support in our rural areas.

It is essential that all our public services co-operate and collaborate across borders, and that we do not allow those borders to become artificial barriers to best practice. Cross-border co-operation is the best way forward, rather than trying to set up templates from the centre and to impose them on local services in a short period of time. Voluntary cross-border collaboration is the model that I would recommend.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead 3:24, 12 October 2005

It is not often that a new Member can stand up in the House and be proud to talk about something that he knows about historically. I declare my interest as a former fireman and a former member of the Fire Brigades Union, of which I am very proud.

Being a former member of the FBU does not mean that I have not had as many battles with it as the Minister has had—or perhaps Mr. Raynsford, who has now returned to his place—over the years. As a fireman in Essex, I battled long and hard with the union about the draconian way in which it operated, and told it that it desperately needed to modernise its position in relation to a modern fire service. It was with some pleasure that, during the strike—which I was sad to see happen—I wrote in the Daily Mail about some modern ideas for the fire service. I said quite openly that the fire service and the FBU could move on only if the dinosaurs who led the heroes—the firemen of this country—were removed from office at the top of the FBU. I am pleased to see that most of them have now been removed. I am sure that I shall get similar hate mail to the kind that I got last time, for making that comment again today.

The Minister knows that I have deep reservations— I have talked to him about this privately and publicly —about the regionalisation of the fire service. I was pleased to discover that his office is next to mine in the Palace. I know that he has been very busy recently, because I have been knocking on his door and he has not answered. One of the reasons that I was doing so was that he promised several Members at a meeting before the summer recess that he would give us notice before the recess of the decision on the regionalisation of control centres. Sadly, that did not happen before the recess. I was desperately worried, because the Minister had made a commitment to us—I am sure that he did so in good faith—to let us know about this matter in good time, so that we could debate it before the recess. However, I am pleased that we are here today debating it.

Photo of Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick Minister (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (London)

Let me apologise to the hon. Gentleman. If I have not apologised before, I certainly do so now. We had hoped to be able to deliver that information before the summer recess, but it was not possible. We put the locations out as soon as we could, which was during the recess. It would have been equally inappropriate to wait until we came back in October to do so.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

I fully accept the Minister's comments. I understand that it can take time to get things to happen when he is dealing with lots of bureaucrats, and it is the bureaucratic mess that I am particularly worried about. The Minister knows a lot about the fire service from his history of working in it, but I am not sure how many of the people who surround him in the civil service in London understand what is happening on the ground.

The Minister joined the fire service a little before I did. At that time, control people in the whole-time stations knew the topography of the local area; they knew what was going on. If someone called the fire brigade, the call went directly to their local whole-time fire station. That service was moved, however, from fire stations to divisional control centres. Why? It was to save money. The service stayed there for a while, where it worked pretty well, although not as well as it had in the stations. Guess what? To save money, we then moved it from the divisional control centres to the brigade control centres, which is where it operates from today. That has worked, because a lot of the local knowledge went to the control centres. It was possible for people who lived in the county and worked in those control centres to move up in that way. Most of the people who work in the control centres in Hertfordshire and in Essex—where I was a full-time firemen—moved in that way, and some of them had put in 20 or 30 years' service.

We are now talking about moving to nine regional control centres. If this is all about saving money—and it is; the Minister has already said that he wants to invest it elsewhere—perhaps we could just have one control centre. Or perhaps we could do as the banks have done and have a call centre in Delhi or Bombay. If it is not about knowledge and only about technology, the proposal for nine centres does not make sense. It must therefore be about what is safe for the public and what works.

Like many other Members, I have grave concerns about IT projects. A Labour Member commented earlier from a sedentary position that IT projects went wrong under Conservative Governments, too, which is perfectly correct—they have been going wrong since time immemorial. In relation to this IT project, the key is lives being saved. That is why I fundamentally oppose the project, and why the FBU opposes it, as it understands the situation on the ground much better than any bureaucrat in Westminster.

I want briefly to consider some of the modernisations that have—or, rather, have not—been introduced. The former Minister for Local and Regional Government, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich commented from a sedentary position that this is not about cuts. If you come to Hertfordshire, however, you will see that Bovingdon and Radlett fire stations are being closed. At least one pump is being removed from Watford, and four full-time firemen from Hemel Hempstead. When we asked the chief fire officer why that had happened, his reply was that he must save £500,000 so that he can finance the fire prevention measures—of which I am wholeheartedly in favour—that are not being funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. We are therefore having cuts—the provision is not being relocated, as some Labour Members were saying, but is vanishing.

The largest town in Hertfordshire is Hemel Hempstead—I am pleased that the Ministers of State from the Department of Health are in the Chamber, as the hospital is also subject to massive cuts, which perhaps I will delve into in a moment—and it has two pumps. The most accident-prone part of the M1 in southern England, junction 8—it is fantastic that it is going to be widened, and I hope that we will not have as many accidents in future—is covered by the pump at Bovingdon, and Bovingdon station is being closed. I take to heart the comments made about retained fire stations, and in a perfect world we would not have any retained or part-time stations. In this imperfect world, however, we have community-based fire stations that serve and are manned by their local community, and we should praise people who are willing to risk their lives for not a lot of money to be retained firemen.

The other week, I attended Dacorum borough council's scrutiny committee and listened to the commander of Bovingdon fire station, who has served as a community fireman for 30 years and who was almost in tears because he knows that the closure of that station will cost lives. One of the reasons that that is possible is that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has changed the rules and allowed a longer time of up to 10 minutes for the appliances to arrive at residences after a call is initiated. It was suggested earlier that most people are dead before the call is made, but many are not. The quicker that we can get the appliances to them, the quicker we can get them out, and those of us who have served know how important that is. If it is the case that most people are dead before the fire engine is called, we might as well turn the blue lights off and just drive. As a former driver of a fire engine, however, I could never do that. I would like to try to drive a fire engine in your constituency and get the distance without the—

Photo of Michael Lord Michael Lord Deputy Speaker (Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means)

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. He must use the correct parliamentary language: "you" and "your" are not permissible in that direct way.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is the second time that I have had to be called to order today, and I apologise to you and the Minister involved earlier. It is a learning process—

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

Yes, it is like the learning process for people in call centres.

If we take away local knowledge and work only on the basis of costs, and say that we need much better fire prevention and smoke alarms fitted but do not fund it, we must close fire stations. Closing Bovingdon station will save £90,000. When I asked the assistant chief constable who did the presentation what the reasons were behind it, he said, "Sir, you have to ask the local politicians about that." I did, and the answer was that Hertfordshire must save £500,000 from the fire budget; otherwise it will not meet the criteria set by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Recently, I, like colleagues on both sides of the House, met representatives of my ambulance trust. I asked them whether they were looking forward to the mooted amalgamation. There was silence. Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire have a fantastic ambulance service. I told them that there will be massive changes to the health service in Hertfordshire. I am not ashamed to mention that I and my constituents are very worried about closures of acute services at Hemel Hempstead hospital, which means that we will need more ambulances to move more people, on a blue light, from my constituency to Watford, the only available accident and emergency department, which happens to be full at the moment and on red alert, so it has not been able to take anyone at all recently. The ambulance trust said, "We have asked for more money, Mr. Penning, but none is forthcoming." I ask the Minister responding to the debate to say where the extra money will come from. Will we get money not only for the reorganisation, but for more ambulances, so that we can move people around this "big is beautiful" health service that seems to be developing?

I turn finally to the police. I in no way take a draconian view on this issue, and I am not completely opposed to any amalgamation of constabularies. As I said this week in my local paper, if such amalgamation puts more bobbies on the beat and leads to a better police force and fewer bureaucrats and administrators, we will consider it. But we can do so only if the relevant evidence is put before us. All too often, we are getting "bounced", be it on fire services, fire control centres, hospitals, ambulances or the police. The lack of information—

Photo of Philip Dunne Philip Dunne Conservative, Ludlow

I want to make a very brief intervention. There is already evidence of the consequences of the regionalisation of police forces. A former divisional commander of the Met, which is effectively a regional force, told me that its priorities do not match those of the local divisional forces surrounding the centre. Resource drift into the centre is an inevitable consequence of the regionalisation of police forces.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Conservative, Hemel Hempstead

Let us hope that that evidence is put before us, so that we can have a proper debate. That is what I am looking for: a proper debate, rather than being "bounced".

Photo of Andrew Lansley Andrew Lansley Shadow Secretary of State for Health 3:36, 12 October 2005

This has been an excellent debate and I share in the gratitude expressed by others to my hon. Friend Mrs. Spelman for introducing it. It is both timely and necessary, given that, in the past three months, we have been unable to engage with the changes to our emergency services affecting our constituents. The debate has shown that Members in all parts of the House are concerned about these changes and it is right that we use our first week back at Westminster to bring our concerns to the Government's attention. I hope that Ministers have listened to those concerns, which are reflected in the motion.

My hon. Friend explained excellently and effectively the essence of the case: there is no basis in evidence for such regionalisation; in many cases, it will run risks; there is good evidence from within the service that it might hinder effectiveness; and there will be an essential loss of accountability or, as my hon. Friend Mr. Boswell put it, certainly a loss of access to those responsible for these vital services.

The Minister, whom I like—he often speaks a great deal of sense—appears to have lost his grip. Perhaps he has been a Minister for too long and read too many briefs, instead of getting out there and seeing what is going on. He failed to answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden. She asked him to show us the evidential basis for having fire control centres and asked whether a cost-benefit analysis had been undertaken. He said, "Oh yes, there is a cost-benefit analysis", but he has not published it and he did not show it to us. We had to wait for John McDonnell to tell us about the plain speaking of the regional management boards concerning the outline business case. They did not accept the case made to them: they did not believe that the claimed benefits would be delivered.

Nor did the Minister answer the question from my hon. Friend Tony Baldry, who said that it is a question of the fire service's resilience not just after 2009, but during the intervening period. Indeed, that is true of many emergency services. We must remember the human dimension. It is all very well writing these ideas down in Whitehall, creating organograms and dealing with the maps and geography; it is when we try to put the ideas into practice and understand how the system is to be managed effectively in the intervening period by organisations—organisations consisting of people—that serious problems emerge.

Sarah Teather introduced us to the concept of "quangocratisation"—whatever that is. She argued on the one hand that voters had rejected elected regional assemblies, and on the other that the Liberal Democrats therefore think that we should move to elected regional government. That is a bizarre approach from the Liberal Democrats, as usual. I am afraid that, once Mr. Raynsford stopped digging himself into a hole, he rather confused me. He appeared to argue that big is better, and that the London fire control system is the biggest and therefore the best. He left to one side the relative resources deployed in London in comparison with the rest of the country, to which my hon. Friend Mr. Harper rightly referred. When choosing examples of where the best technology was located, the right hon. Gentleman did not mention London, but Norfolk and Merseyside. If those two areas can lead the way in the application of new technologies, why cannot a smaller service be relied on to deliver the appropriate technology?

The fact is that the Government do not want to support more accessible and accountable services that mesh attention to local need and local partnerships with the application of best technology. Rather, as my hon. Friend Mike Penning said, they want to make substantial savings, which they probably erroneously believe can be realised from economies of scale in the regionalisation of control centres.

Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich

Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House whether, in delivering public services, his party believes that it is right to look for the most cost-effective means while at the same time maintaining the highest standards of service to the public? If he does not accept that, will he explain why not?

Photo of Andrew Lansley Andrew Lansley Shadow Secretary of State for Health

Of course we believe in cost-effectiveness and value for money, but two points need to be made. First, the Minister has not presented any evidence to demonstrate cost-effectiveness. Secondly, as I was arguing, the Government are prepared to cut costs in order to redirect money elsewhere. That is not wrong in itself. Spending money on fire prevention will indeed save lives. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead rightly pointed out, those who work in the fire service today want to be able to respond to 999 calls effectively and they want to develop and structure their service in a way that is responsive to local needs. If regionalisation cuts costs but reduces effectiveness, it does not provide value for money. That is the key point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry provided an almost impossibly large amount of information about the geography of his constituency and where he lives, but we entirely understood his point that it is all very well being at the centre of England, but it does not necessarily prevent one from being at everyone's boundary. The idea that by having fewer bodies we have fewer boundaries has been mentioned several times. Let us go to the absurd length of considering a service that is fully national in all respects. That might be said to mean that there were no boundaries, that everything was seamless and that all services would run at maximum effectiveness—but we know that that is nonsense. The real issue is determining the proper degree of rationalisation necessary to deliver effectiveness.

Photo of Andrew Lansley Andrew Lansley Shadow Secretary of State for Health

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, many important issues were raised and I want to say a few words about the ambulance service.

Only a few hon. Members referred to the ambulance service, but it is a key issue. The Minister who is to reply to the debate knows that the Peter Bradley review was published earlier this year. She also knows that it suggested that some rationalisation was necessary to deliver a degree of strategic capacity for some ambulance services.

Let us consider the Avon, Gloucester and Wiltshire ambulance services, for example. My hon. Friend Mr. Gray mentioned that the Wiltshire ambulance service was felt to be too small to be able to deliver the necessary strategic capacity. My hon. Friend Adam Afriyie made a similar point about the Royal Berkshire ambulance service. Notwithstanding its three-star status, it was felt that it needed to be run on a Thames valley basis to deliver the requisite strategic capacity. In neither of those instances and not at all in the Bradley review, was there any argument that the rationalisation of ambulance services needed to reduce them to as few as 11 trusts. On the basis of the Bradley review, we would be looking at about 25 trusts. Many of the relevant trusts are at the top of the star ratings, to which the Government attach so much importance: they are three-star trusts serving relatively small populations of about 1 million to 2 million.

A good argument can be made in some cases, but the problem arises if we move away from ambulance service trusts of about that size. What do we move to? The hon. Member for Brent, East mentioned the key point about ambulance services: they will be much less capable of integrating with emergency care networks. There is a whole agenda within the NHS of turning ambulance services into emergency care trusts that are capable—if the local emergency care networks or the primary care trusts wish to commission them—of delivering out-of-hours services. They are certainly capable of being first-response organisations. Ambulance services may even take over provider functions if PCTs are required to give them up. Any regional ambulance service would resemble the London service, which is not moving towards such innovations. It would be much less able to create the local partnerships that are so necessary and could not be managed in a way that would ensure integrated emergency care, because its standards would be set centrally.

If big were beautiful, the London ambulance service would be the best in the country. I have the greatest respect for its personnel, who responded magnificently on 7 July. However, they know, as do we, that the London service does not attain the same high standards achieved by other services. The question of how a service responds to calls was at the centre of the Bradley review, which showed that the London service was substantially less rigorous than many others. Moreover, its control centre does not have the computer-aided despatch process that other services enjoy. There is therefore no basis for the Government's proposals for the ambulance services.

In addition, the Minister failed to recognise an especially glaring anomaly. He said that the police service proposals were not set in stone and that any change would be service-led and based on open consultation. In contrast, with the ambulance service, we have not even got as far as public consultation on regional control centres, yet the Government have already decided that there will be 11 ambulance trusts. No evidence has been offered to show why that would be desirable and I know of no public support for the proposals. The people in the service to whom I have spoken believe that the proposals are driven entirely by the Government's cost-saving agenda. They do not believe that that is justified, nor expect the savings to be achieved.

I do not wish to embarrass the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, but he was able to answer a question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden that the Minister avoided. He said that the outline business case in respect of fire control centres was not supported by the available evidence and that documentation in his possession showed that the proposal was not supported by the regional management boards of the fire service.

It is not good enough for the Minister to say that he will write to the hon. Gentleman and place his letter in the Library of the House. He should have published months ago the cost-benefit analysis and outline business case that underlie the Government's proposals so that they could be subject to public scrutiny.

This has been a vital debate and I am glad that we have had it. It equips all of us with the ability to tell our constituents that we have challenged the Government but, more importantly, it has exposed the Government's failure to explain why they want to go down the path of regionalisation. The Government have been frustrated by the result of the assembly elections in the north-east, but nevertheless wish to proceed with the regionalisation of government. However, that regional government will remain under the control of the ODPM and central Government.

This Government have been in office too long and have forgotten that they are responsible to the people of this country. Instead, and one way or another, they want to run all the services in this country from Whitehall.

Photo of Rosie Winterton Rosie Winterton The Minister of State, Department of Health 3:48, 12 October 2005

Naturally, I do not agree with the motion, but I am pleased that the debate has given us the opportunity to pay tribute once again to the work of our emergency services, whose dedication and commitment are second to none. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said—his words were echoed by my right hon. Friend Mr. Raynsford and by several Opposition Members—the events of 7 July gave us a tragic reminder of the invaluable work performed by the people who staff our emergency services. I am sure that the whole House wants to pay tribute to them.

This debate has also allowed us to discuss how to shape our emergency services for the 21st century, and for all the new demands and challenges that we face. It is true that our police, fire and ambulance services are all undergoing change. That is not only because we want high-quality local services, but because we need to have emergency services that can deal with major incidents, whether terrorist attacks, chemical incidents, major transport accidents or natural disasters such as the floods that we have seen all too often in recent years. All the evidence and lessons learned over the past few years point to the fact that major incidents require a co-ordinated response across local boundaries. Specialist equipment is often required and personnel from a wider geographical area may need to be called upon. It has to be possible to mobilise at short notice resources from outside the immediate area. Disasters do not respect local authority boundaries and we have to have emergency services that respond to that fact.

As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said about the fire service, we need to upgrade our communication and control centres so that they can deal as effectively as possible with major incidents. He also said that, in July, the London fire brigade showed the importance of being able to respond at a regional level. It is generally accepted that a similar strategic approach is necessary throughout the country.

Photo of Richard Younger-Ross Richard Younger-Ross Liberal Democrat, Teignbridge

The new control centres rely on phone location identification for landlines and mobile lines. I understand that the software for landlines is not yet in place and that it is certainly not in place for mobile telephones. Will the Minister give an assurance that no regional control room will open until that software is in place and that all phones can be identified on the computer?

Photo of Rosie Winterton Rosie Winterton The Minister of State, Department of Health

I understand that, in a number of areas, the software is already in place and it goes without saying that that will all be taken into account in opening regional centres.

I felt that the debate was slightly like a branch meeting of the Fire Brigades Union, not only because of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary's background but because of the contribution of Mike Penning, who started well but deteriorated when he criticised some of those working in the service. In terms of the local changes to the fire service, my hon. Friend has heard the comments made by my hon. Friend Mr. Campbell. I understand that the Under-Secretary wrote back to my hon. Friend two days ago and he will respond, as he said he would, to my hon. Friend John McDonnell to his points about finance. We will look into the points about the contract made by Mr. Gray. I hope that my hon. Friend also reassured Mr. Harper on the new technology.

With regard to the police, my hon. Friend said that the independent inspectorate was clear that a move to larger strategic forces across England and Wales would provide the best business solution to ensure that every force had sufficient capability and capacity to provide the full range of protective services, including preparedness for response to large-scale incidents, alongside effective neighbourhood policing.

Sarah Teather spoke about further consultation and the police themselves have made proposals, but we will pass on her point and that of Mr. Boswell about future consultation to follow on from the proposals, which are to received at the end of December. As Mr. Lansley pointed out, the ambulance services review was carried out by the chief executive of the London ambulance service. The review concluded that we need fewer and bigger ambulance trusts if they are to be able to respond to major incidents, as well as to invest in the people and resources needed to increase the range of services that they provide for patients and the public. Our proposals will ensure that resources are targeted at where they are needed most and that they improve patient care and support front-line services.

We propose that there should be 11 trusts that will align with the Government Offices for the Regions, the fire service control rooms and the proposed strategic health authorities and be set up within boundaries that enable closer co-operation with police forces. For the first time, ambulance trusts will be aligned both with services that respond to major emergencies and services that provide day-to-day health care.

Photo of Rosie Winterton Rosie Winterton The Minister of State, Department of Health

If I may anticipate the hon. Gentleman's point, a particular example of a gain from our proposals is the training of emergency care practitioners. If that is done on a more strategic level, the training will be improved and skills and potential enhanced.

Photo of Andrew Lansley Andrew Lansley Shadow Secretary of State for Health

One of the best ambulance trusts in the country—its standards are reflected in its star ratings—is the Staffordshire ambulance trust. We have heard from hon. Members across Staffordshire that the trust delivers an effective service and that it is innovative and at the leading edge of ambulance trust delivery. Why does the Minister think that regionalisation would improve that trust? The implication of what she has just said is regional control centres for ambulance services, but the Government have not said that they propose such centres.

Photo of Rosie Winterton Rosie Winterton The Minister of State, Department of Health

No, that is not the case. We will consult on the proposals for 11 trusts, but we have also made it clear that decisions about control rooms will be taken at local level. There are some very good ambulance trusts and the idea is not that their standards should be brought down by merging. The idea is that they will help to improve other ambulance trusts—an idea that has worked time and again in the NHS. We will have services that can respond properly and strategically at regional level and also reflect needs at local level.

Photo of Paul Farrelly Paul Farrelly Labour, Newcastle-under-Lyme

The effectiveness of the Staffordshire ambulance trust has already been pointed out and my hon. Friend Charlotte Atkins raised it with the Prime Minister. Will my hon. Friend the Minister give an assurance that, after the consultation, we will not have a one-size-fits-all solution imposed and that, if local arrangements are shown to work, the Government will not try to fix them?

Photo of Rosie Winterton Rosie Winterton The Minister of State, Department of Health

If my hon. Friend had been in his place earlier, he would know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary made it clear that the proposals were all about being responsive at local level, as well as good strategic co-ordination. They are not about changes to front-line ambulance service provision. Local innovations and successes would be not only preserved, but shared to benefit all. This is an opportunity to lift the quality of the lowest and set a high benchmark.

The hon. Member for Meriden asked why we have proposed the changes. The answer is simple: we want better, faster services that are more responsive to major incidents. It is extraordinary that the Opposition choose to denigrate the fact that we are ensuring that our emergency services can respond as effectively as possible at regional and neighbourhood level.

What did the Conservative party offer the emergency services and the public when it was in power? Crime doubled, the NHS was run into the ground and the fire services, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich so eloquently put it, were left to stagnate with no attempt to modernise or invest in them to make them fit for the 21st century. The Conservatives learned no lessons at the last general election, because the patient's passport would have taken £1.2 billion out of the NHS—almost exactly the cost of the ambulance service in England.

The debate has once again underlined the fact that it is the Government who are in tune with what the public want—policies that the public endorsed at the general election—which is modern, up-to-date emergency services that are properly equipped, with proper training, and properly co-ordinated to save lives and protect the public.

Once again the Opposition are swimming against the tide of public opinion and fighting the battles of the past. I urge my hon. Friends to vote against the motion and for the Government.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 241, Noes 298.

Division number 53 Emergency Services (Regionalisation)

Aye: 241 MPs

No: 298 MPs

Aye: A-Z by last name

Tellers

No: A-Z by last name

Tellers

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House supports local, regional and national collaboration to improve public safety and health; welcomes the continuing reduction in fire deaths which Fire and Rescue Authorities have achieved in partnership with the Government and other stakeholders; welcomes the positive role played by local authorities in Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships and the fall in crime as a result; welcomes the public consultation underway to ensure police force structures protect the public from terrorism and organised crime, while continuing to provide responsive neighbourhood policing that meets the needs of local communities; welcomes the proposed managerial changes in ambulance trusts which will cut overheads and bureaucracy, while boosting investment in front-line staff and services for patients; and congratulates the Government on increasing expenditure on all the emergency services since its election in 1997.